COLUMBUS, Ohio, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Scientists say they hope ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps will yield clues to the ancient climate history of the region.
Researchers from Ohio State University and European colleagues say analysis of the cores will provide a record of past climate and environmental changes in the region for several centuries -- and perhaps as far back as 1,000 years.
The project retrieved four cores from a glacier on Mount Ortles, a 12,812-foot peak in northeastern Italy -- the first cores retrieved from the eastern side of the Alps. Three of the cores are 246-feet long and one was 197 feet long, researchers said.
Retrieval of the cores now is important because climate change may mean the loss of the ice record in the future, expedition leader Paolo Gabrielli of Ohio State's Byrd Polar Research Center said.
"This glacier is already changing from the top down in a very irreversible way," Gabrielli said. "It is changing from a 'cold' glacier where the ice is stable to a 'temperate' glacier where the ice can degrade.
"The entire glacier may transition to a temperate state within the next decade or so," he said, meaning the preserved climate history in the glacier's ice would be lost.
The research team spent two weeks on the glacier drilling the four cores, and OSU release said Monday.
