MARUM scientists Ursula Röhl and Alex Wülbers are investigating what the ocean floor has to tell us about the climate in the past. In this report they talk about an especially challenging expedition; how with a drilling ship they navigated the Arctic ice to the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater shelf that extends through the northern polar region.
There, where the once supposedly “eternal ice cap” has begun to disappear, drillings can now be carried out deep into the sea bed.
The cores of sediment the scientists drill out of the ocean floor are kept in cold storage at MARUM. The collection plays a central role in the IODP project. The two researchers tell us about the fascinating information they are trying to extract from the deep-sea core samples.