French climatologist to present public lecture

30 July 2001

One of the world's leading climatologists, who has worked on the famous Vostok Ice Core Project in Antarctica, which has led to the dating of Earth's temperatures as far back as 400,000 years ago, will present a special public lecture in Wollongong on Tuesday 31 July.

The distinguished French palaeoclimatologist, Dr Jean Jouzel, has been awarded a Selby Fellowship by the Australian Academy of Sciences enabling him to present a lecture tour. He is a world leader in the investigation of past and present climatic change and has studied the ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland.

The drilling project at the Antarctic site of Vostok involved a collaboration between Russia, France and the United States. The Vostok ice-core has provided the longest record of past changes in climate and atmospheric composition with researchers using a specially made "heat drill" to explore almost a four-kilometre hole near the South Pole.

Samples retrieved from the ice core have provided researchers with a journey back 400,000 years with trapped air bubbles keeping intact samples of the past atmospheres.

Scientists have therefore been able to track carbon dioxide and greenhouse effect changes over thousands of years enabling future climatic predictions to be made.

The Antarctic project took five years to complete and has provided a "time capsule of history", according to Professor Allan Chivas of UOW's School of Geosciences.