Ancient ice from Antarctica delivered to St. Petersburg

The press service of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute said that the institution received samples of ancient ice 1.2 million years old. The ice was extracted by Russian scientists from the depths of a glacier near Lake Vostok in Antarctica. It was delivered to St. Petersburg by the research expedition vessel "Akademik Fedorov".

Now the samples will be stored in the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute under special conditions, at a temperature of -45°C. This temperature will preserve the unique properties of ice, which is necessary for detailed analysis.

Scientists expect that ancient ice will provide information about climate changes on Earth in the Middle Pleistocene era. It was then, according to experts, that the climate system was restructured, and the change of glacial and interglacial epochs began to occur with an approximate cycle of 100 thousand years. In the same period, presumably, an increased concentration of CO2 could be observed in the atmosphere, which should have influenced the transformation of the climate on the planet.

Lake Vostok is the world's largest subglacial reservoir. It was discovered at the end of the 20th century in Antarctica in the area of the Russian Antarctic station Vostok. The area of this freshwater reservoir is about 16 thousand square kilometers, the thickness of the water layer reaches 1,200 meters. For several million years, the ecosystem of Lake Vostok has been isolated from external influences under a layer of ice at a depth of about 4 kilometers. Today it is the least explored place on the planet.