SAN DIEGO _ It's summer in Antarctica, and scientists from all around the world are flying to research stations on the frozen continent as part of a now years-long campaign to uncover the world's oldest ice.
At stake is the ability to more accurately predict planetary warming from greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the foremost experts on the hunt is Jeff Severinghaus, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He believes that, after several years of tests, he could now be just months away from a major breakthrough using an experimental drill of his own design.
"The more we learn, the harder it's apparently going to be to find the ideal, unbroken ice-core, but we're not giving up," Severinghaus said in a recent interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune a few days before leaving for Antarctica. He added: "We're getting close to overcoming all the problems."
The international search will likely culminate in an epic expedition costing tens of millions of dollars and spanning the better part of a decade _ with researchers and technicians perched on a glacier 10,000 feet above sea level in subzero temperatures, drilling down more than two miles into the ice to carefully extract long cylindrical samples.
While such costly and time-consuming projects have been undertaken in the past, scientists have yet to find an ice sheet that continuously extends back more than a million years.
