Antarctica is the Earth’s southernmost continent, located on the South Pole, where temperatures can be as low as -90C. Anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 scientists reside there at various research facilities, carrying out their own experiments. However, one investigation left a team of researchers astonished.
Amazon Prime’s “Antarctica – An Adventure Of A Different Nature” revealed the moment scientists dug almost 500ft into an ice sheet to learn about the icy continent’s history.
The 1991 documentary explained: “A core drill digs deep into the ice sheet.
“Ice layers can read like the rings of trees and the climate record goes back 100,000 years.
“Entrapped bubbles of ancient air – the ice cores tell a simple story.
“When the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere change, so does the climate.”
However, when the scientists analysed the ice layer, they were left stunned.
The series explained: “A day, a week, a month, a year, a decade – the core came from 466ft down and its ice fell as snow about 4,000 years ago.
“From the crystal of the ice, the news from Antarctica is bad.
“Methane, strontium 90, lead, increased carbon dioxide, we are changing the air and we can see the effects.
“20 years ago, scientists predicted man-made chemicals would thin the planet’s protective layer of ozone.
“That has now become dramatic.”
In May 1985, Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin observed a decline in the polar ozone was far larger than believed.
The discovery of the ozone hole was initially rejected as unreasonable but later studies showed that the initial concerns were valid.
Since 1991, the United Nations Environment Programme has sponsored a series of technical reports on the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion to reverse the effects.
In 2007, a report was released that showed the hole in the ozone layer was recovering and was the smallest it had been for around a decade.
The 2010 paper read: “Over the past decade, global ozone and ozone in the Arctic and Antarctic regions is no longer decreasing but is not yet increasing.
“The ozone layer outside the Polar regions is projected to recover to its pre-1980 levels before the middle of this century.
“In contrast, the springtime ozone hole over the Antarctic is expected to recover much later.”
In 2012, NASA confirmed the hole had decreased once again.
They revealed: “Warmer air temperatures high above the Antarctic led to the second smallest season ozone hole in 20 years averaging 17.9 million square kilometres.
“The hole reached its maximum size for the season on September 22, stretching to 21.2 million square kilometres (13.8 million square miles).”