Is there 1.5-million-year-old ice near Dome C, Antarctica?

Parrenin, Frédéric; Cavitte, Marie G. P.; Blankenship, Donald D.; Chappellaz, Jérôme; Fischer, Hubertus; Gagliardini, Olivier; Masson-Delmotte, Valérie; Passalacqua, Olivier; Ritz, Catherine; Roberts, Jason; Siegert, Martin J.; Young, Duncan A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-2427-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-2427-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Oldest Ice: finding and interpreting climate proxies in ice...

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-2427-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 6

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

02 Nov 2017

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 02 Nov 2017

Is there 1.5-million-year-old ice near Dome C, Antarctica?

Frédéric Parrenin, Marie G. P. Cavitte, Donald D. Blankenship, Jérôme Chappellaz, Hubertus Fischer, Olivier Gagliardini, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Olivier Passalacqua, Catherine Ritz, Jason Roberts, Martin J. Siegert, and Duncan A. Young

Model code and software

Source code of the IsoInv model F. Parrenin and M. Cavitte https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.898107

Short summary

The oldest dated deep ice core drilled in Antarctica has been retrieved at EPICA Dome C (EDC), reaching ~ 800 000 years. Obtaining an older palaeoclimatic record from Antarctica is one of the greatest challenges of the ice core community. Here, we estimate the age of basal ice in the Dome C area. We find that old ice (> 1.5 Myr) likely exists in two regions a few tens of kilometres away from EDC: Little Dome C Patch and North Patch.