Instrument: Ice Corer

An ice corer is used to drill into deep ice and remove long cylinders of ice from which information about the past and present can be inferred. Polar ice cores contain a record of the past atmosphere - temperature, precipitation, gas content, chemical composition, and other properties. This can reveal a broad spectrum of information on past environmental, and particularly climatic, changes. They can also be used to study bacteria and chlorophyll production in the waters from which the ice core was extracted.