Atmospheric CO2 in Ice Cores
The gas must be expelled from the ice cores for experimental analysis; this is done by crushing the sample under vacuum. The gas bubbles trapped in the ice are not exactly the same age as the ice surrounding them due to the naturally slow process of gas entrapment. The expelled gas is collected, and then analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) to determine the chemical makeup.
The graphs on the left plots CO2 data from the Vostok, Antarctica ice core. The data goes back 400,000 years and clearly demonstrates a correlation between temperature, and CO2 concentrations.
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