Jim White studies really old ice. He thinks it will help predict
what the climate will be like in the future. White is director
of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University
of Colorado at Boulder and lead U.S. investigator on the North
Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling project or NEEM. NEEM is about
trying to get a good record of the last interglacial period from
Greenland 120,000 to 130,000 years ago when Greenland was two to
three degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, he says. "And
thus it represents our closest analogue in time to where we are
going in the future." Project leader Dorthe Dahl Jensen holding
the final piece of ice extracted from 2537.36 meters. White is a
member of an international team of scientists that, over five
years, has drilled 2.5 kilometers to bedrock to extract a 2,500
meter-long ice core in three-to-four meter chunks. And once they
come up to the surface, he says, "We measure, we log and we
match to make sure that we know that we're getting a continuous
record."