This article describes the remarkable efforts of a team of scientists to extract cores from deep under a frozen lake in Siberia, Russia. PolarTREC teacher Tim Martin joined the project which will provide an astounding record of past climates preserved in layers of lake bed sediment. The sediment, withdrawn in cores and shipped to labs in Germany, represents a continuous record of past Arctic conditions going back 3.6 million years. The more complete picture of paleoclimate it forms will help scientists understand how and why Earth's climate changed in the past, and give them better tools for predicting the future.
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