The Tibetan Plateau or Third Pole (TP) covers over 5 million km² and contains ~46,000 glaciers. These glaciers constitute one of Earth’s largest stores of fresh water which feeds Asia’s largest rivers and helps sustain 1.5 billion people. A collaborative two-month program conducted by a 44-member team from The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) and the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences is currently underway. The main objective of this program  in the western Kunlun Mountains in the western TP is to drill 4 deep ice cores through the Guliya ice cap (6700 m asl), both on the summit as well as on a lower, thicker (>300 meters) dome. Presently, 10 members of the BPCRC team are in the field, along with 7 tons of equipment including ice core drills, snowmobiles, generators and ice sounders.

The scientific objective is to reconstruct a climate history through the Last Glacial Cycle (last 100,000 years) by developing continuous high-resolution stable isotope, glaciochemical, dust, trace element, and black carbon records. Through their short (<decadal) to long (>millennial) term time series, these ice cores will provide the long-term context for climatic, atmospheric and environmental variability for one of the least studied places on Earth. Specifically, we propose to address the following objectives: (1) document past and present (last 25 years) abrupt climate change recorded in the Guliya ice cap; (2) determine precisely the age of the ice cap both at the summit and the lower site; (3) analyze the atmospheric and climatological dynamics which have allowed Guliya to survive since the Eemian, while glaciers to the east and south did not exist before the Early Holocene (~10,000 years yrs BP); (4) determine the regional characteristics of climatic and environmental variability during the Eemian (~125,000 years ago) and beyond and how they compare to Eemian and Holocene conditions elsewhere, including the Polar Regions.

Thank you to Lonnie Thompson for providing this expedition overview in addition to video from the original expedition to the Guliya ice cap. Links to coverage by CCTV are provided below.  

http://english.cntv.cn/2015/09/18/VIDE1442524441232432.shtml
http://english.cntv.cn/2015/09/14/VIDE1442199840585623.shtml
http://english.cntv.cn/2015/09/14/VIDE1442191325521963.shtml
http://english.cntv.cn/2015/09/13/VIDE1442120402352216.shtml

Additional media coverage is available from the New York Times and National Science Foundation. A short film created by BPCRC media specialist Pam Theodotou using field footage collected by expedition member Giuliano Bertagna called Guliya is featured below.