3 November, 2008 News stories

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP visited British Antarctic Survey on Friday 31 October on a fact-finding mission.

In the week that new research attributed warming in the polar regions to human activity, Mr Miliband had an opportunity for a first-hand introduction to the science behind the story. A visit to the Survey’s ice core facility illustrated how Antarctica’s ice contains a unique climate record of the last 800,000 years. Dr Eric Wolff explained how analysis of chemicals and tiny air bubbles trapped in the ice reveals the natural rhythms of the Earth and shows clearly the rapid and unprecedented rise in atmospheric CO2 since the Industrial Revolution.