Is this really a world geography fact?

Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Ice cores trap ancient air for study

Bubbles sealed in glacier ice preserve samples of the atmosphere from thousands of years ago Snow compacts into ice and closes off pockets of air, which stay there under pressure. Cores drilled through the Greenland and Antarctic sheets reach hundreds of thousands of years back. Chemists measure the gases and dust in each layer to rebuild past temperatures and volcanic eruptions. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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More facts like this

The Rwenzori has glaciers almost on the equatorThese peaks on the Uganda and Congo border carry ice despite sitting within a degree of the Equator Blood Falls in Antarctica flows with crimson iron-rich waterEmerging from the Taylor Glacier, the waterfall gets its deep red colour from oxidised iron.Antarctica holds Earth's largest single ice sheetIt covers the whole continent and holds roughly sixty per cent of the world's fresh water Glaciers flow downhill like very slow riversIce deforms under its own weight, so a glacier keeps moving while staying solid Glaciers carry boulders far from their bedrockErratics are rocks dumped many miles from any outcrop of the same stone Fjords are glacial valleys that the sea floodedIce cut the valleys below sea level, and when it melted the ocean moved in

Tags: glaciers, climate, science

Ice cores trap ancient air for study: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Bubbles sealed in glacier ice preserve samples of the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. The figure is taken from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a world geography fact?: Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.