Greenland ice core reveals history of pollution in the Arctic

Records taken from a Greenland ice core showed pollution from coal burning in North America and Europe that traveled through the atmosphere and deposited in the Arctic Region was higher 100 years ago, confounding researcher expectations that pollution was at its peak in the 1960s and '70s. This image is of an ice core sample sitting on a melter head in the research facility. The longitudinal ice core sample falls by gravity onto the heated melter plate and the melt water split into three streams by grooves etched into the melter head. Only the inner most 10 percent of the melt water is used for ultra-trace elemental measurements. The middle 20 percent used for major ions and particle size determinations. The potentially contamined outer 70 percent of the melt water is discarded. Credit: Joseph McConnell, Desert Research Institute