Scientists from the ACE and AAD successfully drilled a 30-metre ice core in East Antarctica in February, bringing home a single continuous climate record from the Law Dome site spanning the past 30 years. The ice core will be used to extend the calibration of ice core chemical and physical measurements against meteorological records. This will further enhance the value of ice core proxy records used for exploring climate processes and forcing for the Law Dome Summit Snow-Climate Observatory project.  The information from the ice cores is gained by sampling ice from the different sections of the core and measuring chemical and physical properties. To collect the core a team travelled for seven hours in two tracked vehicles from Casey Station to Law Dome. As well as collecting the ice core the expedition allowed scientists to test a new shallow ice core drill that will be used next summer during the Aurora Basin North ice coring project. The team camped for two nights in minus 15 degrees and, once their work was completed, returned to Casey with the ice core, which was then transported by air to the ACE CRC in Hobart. The Law Dome Summit Snow-Climate Observatory project aims to ensure that a climate record is maintained for Law Dome by recovering regular shallow cores.  Having ice core data to overlap with meteorological data allows for robust assessment of recent climate variability and change. The Law Dome summit ice cores have very high resolution, making them particularly suitable for calibration with meteorological data, and therefore improving the interpretation of ice core records more generally.

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