abstract:The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide is a deep ice core drilling project run by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The general purpose of the WAIS Divide project is to collect a deep ice core from the flow divide in the central West Antarctic Ice Sheet that can be used for scientific analysis and research.
Scientists think the WAISDivide core should provide the most accurate record to date of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which will allow them to better ascertain the role of carbon dioxide in climate change.
Furthermore, the high-quality dating of the WAISDivide core will make it easy to correlate with cores from Greenland's ice sheet, allowing for a tighter coupling of records from the Artic and the Antarctic.
Several hours from the South Pole, in the barren expanses of western Antarctica, a small team of American researchers has just finished their second field-season with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide Ice Core project.