Word: icing
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...understand what has happened to the earth's atmosphere--and, therefore, how our climate might change in the future--some ice-core scientists in the Arctic are training their eyes directly downward. It's an incredibly important job. It's also, as the participants in the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project will attest, incredibly fun. Where else can you snowmobile all day across Olympic-quality piste, make modern art out of 200-year-old ice crystals and relax at "night" (the sun never sets during the arctic summer) with copious amounts of Carlsberg beer delivered...
...also be downright freezing, as I discover when our visiting group (a collection of journalists, scientists and Danish environmental officials) decamps from the C-130 Hercules transport plane that brought us to NEEM. It's maybe --9°C (16°F) on the ice--balmy, as far as summertime goes on the Greenland ice sheet. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, the motherly Danish field leader of the NEEM project, greets us at the camp's main kitchen, dining room and work space: a toasty geodesic dome straight from the winter dreams of Buckminster Fuller. I quickly learn that a great deal...
...empty mini-kegs of Heineken, this isn't polar summer camp. The scientific work being done at NEEM is as hard as it is necessary. About a mile (1.6 km) outside the main camp, Danish scientists Steffen Bo Hansen and Sigfus Johann Johnsen drill holes 70 meters down. The ice beneath NEEM is more than a mile and a half (2.5 km) thick, the result of over 130,000 years of accumulated snow. Tiny air bubbles from the year the snow fell are trapped in layers of frost, and when the ice is brought back to the surface, scientists...
Standing on the seemingly endless ice cap, where blinding white stretches in all directions, I find it hard to imagine ever losing Greenland. But the island has surrendered an average of 150 billion tons of ice over the past four summers, melting away like the cubes of glacier--dating back to 1816--that the scientists drink in glasses of whiskey at a farewell party. As it warms, we'll probably lose more, but the hope is that through projects like NEEM, we will finally understand our climatic past before meeting our uncertain future. The scientists here think we're running...
High up in the stunning Kashmir Valley lies a natural cave called Amarnath, where stalagmites form during the summer months. Devout Hindus believe this cave to be one of the holiest sites of their religion, and that the largest of the ice formations is a Shiva Lingam, the symbol of Lord Shiva. Hindu mythology has it that Shiva - the destroyer in the Hindu Trinity that includes Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver - imparted the secrets of creation to his consort, Parvati, in Amarnath. Each year, during the months of July and August, hundreds of thousands of Hindu pilgrims from...