New focuses of polar ice-core study: NEEM and Dome A

Ice core records from polar regions are of great value to study long-term climate and environmental change. Greenland ice-core records are celebrated for their high resolution and have provided very important knowledge for understanding the late Quaternary palaeoclimate, especially in reference to millennial-scale abrupt climatic flips during the last glaciation. Recently, a new project to retrieve a deep ice-core from Greenland known as NEEM for North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, has been launched with the main target being the last interglacial period. The new core will help us understand further details of climate changes during a period of warmth as the present. Antarctic ice cores have a unique advantage in providing recovery of longer time-scale paleclimate information and hence are regarded as a crucial pillar to examine climatic cycles on the time-scale of Earth-orbital phenomena. Since the bottom ice in Dome A is estimated to be older than a million years, a deep drilling there becomes a new focus for ice core studies. Supported by Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX2-SW-354) and National Key Technology Research and Development Program (Grant No. 2006BAB18B01)