摘要：Ice cores provide information about
past climate and environmental conditions
on timescales from decades
to hundreds of millennia, and direct
records of the composition of the
atmosphere. As such, they are cornerstones
of global change research.
For example, ice cores play a central
role in showing how closely climate
and greenhouse gas concentrations
were linked in the past, and in demonstrating
that very abrupt climate
switches can occur. With the completion
of major projects in Greenland
and Antarctica over the last 15 years,
the international ice coring community
is planning for the next several
decades. The costs and scope of future
work create the need for coordinated
international collaboration.
Developing this international collaboration
is the charge of IPICS, International
Partnerships in Ice Core
Sciences, a planning group currently
composed of ice coring scientists,
engineers, and drillers from 18 nations.
