The Japanese team uses laser technology for ice core sampling to accurately study climate change

Recently, a research team from the Astronomical Glaciology Laboratory under the RIKEN Nishina Center (RNC) of the Japanese Institute of Physics and Chemistry announced that they have developed a new laser based sampling system for studying the composition of glacier ice cores.

The above image shows the discrete holes sampled 150mm from the shallow ice core of the Fuji Ice Dome in Japan (Southeast Antarctica)
(Image source: RIKEN)

The depth resolution of the new system is 3 millimeters, three times lower than the currently available resolution, which means it can detect temperature changes that occurred in a shorter period of time in the past.

The new laser melting sampler (LMS) is expected to help reconstruct continuous annual temperature changes thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago, which will help scientists understand past and present climate change. This study was published in the Journal of Glaciology on September 19, 2023.

Draw a climate history map
Tree rings can tell us the age of trees, and the color and width of the rings reveal information about the local climate in those years. The annual growth of glaciers can also tell us this information, but it often takes much longer. The team of scientists led by Yuko Motizuki also hopes that they can study past climate change by analyzing cylindrical ice cores extracted from glaciers.

By regularly sampling along the core, researchers can reconstruct a continuous temperature distribution. However, for samples collected from depths, this is impossible because the annual accumulation there is usually compressed to sub centimeters.

Currently, scientists typically use two standard ice core sampling methods. One method yields a depth accuracy of approximately 10 millimeters, which means that data accumulated for years less than 10 millimeters will be lost, and any significant climate change event will be missed. Another method has good depth accuracy, but it destroys some of the samples required for analyzing water content, which is the main method used by scientists to calculate past temperatures.

The new laser melting sampler overcomes these two problems: it has high depth accuracy and does not damage the key oxygen and hydrogen isotopes found in water, which are necessary for inferring past temperatures.

From: Ofweek