Chinese scientists have extracted a 324-meter-long ice core from the Purog Kangri ice sheet, breaking the record of ice core extraction in low and middle latitudes.
Chinese scientists conduct a survey on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, southwest China. /CMG
Purog Kangri, located on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau of southwest China, is the third largest ice sheet in the world, following the Antarctic and the Greenland ice sheets.
With a maximum measured thickness of nearly 400 meters, the ice sheet is deemed an important area in the study of climate and environmental changes of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau as well as the whole world, since the plateau is known as the "roof of the world" and Asia's "water tower."
Ice cores offer a way to study Earth's past environmental conditions as they contain specific chemical and physical components that accumulate each year as the snow turns into a layer of ice.
(Cover: Chinese scientists conduct a survey on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, southwest China. /CMG)