English subtitles for clip: File:Klima-Archiv Eislabor (ZDF, Terra X) 720p HD 50FPS.webm

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In search of climate traces
from the history of the earth,

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in the ice laboratory
of the Alfred Wegener Institute.

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Ice cores from Antarctica
are a kind of climate archive.

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They provide information

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about the contents of greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere

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from thousands of years ago.

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"Well, this one meter long
piece of ice core

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from 808 to 809 meters
shows how the archive works.

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There is always snow on the ice cap

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and this snow naturally takes properties
of the atmosphere into the ice cap.

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And if I drill a core out of the ice cap,

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I go back, as it were,
from the new to the old days,

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and can I analyze these older layers

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and determine the composition,
the properties of the atmosphere.

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For example you can see
this very nicely on an ash layer,

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where dust and volcanic ash
were transported in the ice cap,

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and I have an 'annual layer' here

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which is then an ash layer
of about two centimeters."

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For the analysis,

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past greenhouse gases
can be removed from the ice,

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a kind of forensic investigation
on the body of our planet.

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"I have a piece of ice here.

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Of course it contains
all the data from the atmosphere,

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the chemical and physical,

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and what special about ice is that 
it also contains air bubbles,

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so ice is the only archive

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where we can get so-called paleo,
ie old air from earlier times,

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and we can open it
by melting it, for example."

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The oldest air bubbles
that bubble from the ice cores

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go back in time to 800,000 years.