Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Saturday Morning News

Glaciers Take Scientists Back in Time

Aired August 11, 2001 - 07:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN ANCHOR: We all know that you can learn about the history of a tree by studying its rings. Now scientists are doing something similar to learn the history of glaciers.

Here's CNN's Jeff Flock reporting on the work of Lonnie Thompson, a groundbreaking scientist.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What the ice is telling Thompson is a tale we're all becoming familiar with, the earth is heating up, and the warming takes its toll on the ice. The glaciers are retreating, and when they melt, the archive is gone.

LONNIE THOMPSON, PH.D., BYRD POLAR RESEARCH CENTER, OSU: Something that's really striking about the late 20th century is the scale at which the retreat is taking place.

FLOCK: Using a drill like this one, specially designed to bore thousands of feet into the ice, Thompson's team brings back ice core samples from the glaciers. Engineers demonstrated the drill for us outside the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, where Thompson is based.

The drill brings up ice one meter at a time. The deeper they drill, the further back they go in time. Their deepest core dates back more than 700,000 years.

THOMPSON: Everyone has seen tree rings and the annual record of time that's archived there. The beauty of ice, though, is that it's a physical parameter, it's not biological. It records what's going on in the earth's system. And -- but it is layered just like a tree, only it'll go back thousands and thousands of years, so you can really get a perspective.

FLOCK: Thompson says all the effort is worth it in those exciting moments of discovery, discovery sometimes immediately visible in the ice, like this core in the Himalayas which shows very clear seasons.

THOMPSON: When you're having a monsoon season, you get the clear white section, and then the dry season comes, you get a dust layer. Monsoon, dry season, monsoon, dry season, monsoon.

FLOCK: But Thompson is in a race against time to gather samples from tropical glaciers before they melt.

THOMPSON: Sometime around 2015, the ice will disappear off Kilimanjaro.

FLOCK: So in the near future, if anyone wants to study the ice at Kilimanjaro, they'll have to come to this freezer in Columbus, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com