Vertical Glaciology: The second discovery of the third dimension in climate research ...

• Main Author: Achermann, Dania
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2020
• Subjects: 550 Earth sciences & geology; 900 History; 940 History of Europe; 970 History of North America; ice core
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.139451; https://boris.unibe.ch/139451/

The history of climate research in the 20th century has been characterised by a crucial shift from a geography-oriented, two-dimensional approach towards a physics-based, three-dimensional concept of climate. In the 1930s, the introduction of new technology, such as radiosondes, enabled climatologists to investigate the high atmosphere, which had before been out of reach. This “conquest of the third dimension” challenged the geographical, surface-oriented notion of climate patterns and opened up climatology to a three-dimensional approach, which deeply changed the character of climate research. Two decades later, by drilling deep into Polar glaciers and using the downward vertical dimension as an archive of Earth’s history, ice core scientists began to reconstruct past climates layer by layer. The data retrieved in deep glacial layers contributed crucially to a temporal expansion of climate history far beyond human time scales. However, the inaccessibility of glaciers and the practical challenges of bringing ...