KEY POINTS:
It is only water, but New Zealand climate scientists expect to learn a lot about past weather patterns from ice samples they will study at a new state-of-the-art research centre opening in Wellington today.
The National Ice Core Facility is a $1.4 million project developed by the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and Victoria University, with involvement from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Antarctica New Zealand.
It is predicted to push New Zealand to the forefront of worldwide ice research, and there have already been requests from 12 overseas scientists to use its facilities.
"It is really a jewel, it is the only one of its kind," Victoria University scientist Nancy Bertler said.
"There are similar ones that we would put into the same class, but that would be less than a handful."
The Lower Hutt building now has 800m of ice cores in its freezers; approximately 80m from the Tasman glacier, and the remainder drilled to depths of 200m in Antarctica.
The ice cores are stored in a warehouse kept chilled to a frosty -35C. By comparison, the room where scientists from the geological and nuclear institute, Niwa and Victoria University will work on their frozen samples is kept at a balmy -18C.
"Ice cores are the most detailed and continous record of past climate that we have," Dr Bertler said.
"We know that we are moving towards a warming world and we know this means more extremes and changes in atmospheric circulation. Ice cores are like weather stations, and give us so much information about the atmosphere and also about the ocean and precipitation patterns."
Through data gleaned from the ice samples, scientists can trace sea level changes dating back around 30,000 years and look for what triggered them. Climate patterns can also be tracked, and scenarios drawn up to predict the likely impact of a warmer globe on New Zealand's rainfall patterns.
