What do scientists use the Antarctic ice cores for?
The long ice cores have older ice at the bottom and more recent ice at the top. Often there are hundreds of years of layers of ice in ice cores and they can be quite long. Scientist use it to analyse the change in the composition of the atmosphere over a period of time by looking at the gasses that are dissolved in the water that makes the ice. For example, if they took an ice core and there was more carbon dioxide in the ice at the top and less as they went down the core, they could conclude that the level of carbon dioxide has increased in the atmosphere since the time of the ice at the bottom of the core.
