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Scientist drilling for ice samples in the Mt Cook - Source: ONE News -
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A group of international scientists are at work in one of the most remote parts of the country.
The team are gathering samples from high in the Mt Cook National Park to track climate change.
"What we're doing is a small part of a big scientific effort to understand the climate," says Julia Thomson, Ice Core scientist.
They are working in the heart of winter in order to get vital ice core samples.
"We can make whatever guesses about the future but essentially the best evidence we've got is to go backwards in time to see what affects the climate what are the changes what are the rhythms and the patterns that it goes through," says Thomson.
It's not the easiest thing to do in harsh conditions.
"If you think of a glacier as having annual layers, each one is a page with writing on it, the writing is telling you about the climate, and the last page that was written was on the top and the first page is right on the bottom of the glacier. But if it's wet the writing get's smudged. It kind of ruins it and we get upset," she says.
It's not easy finding the ideal site. The spot that the scientists have found is below 3000 metres and it's relatively flat. There's about 50 metres of ice below and the air temperature has to be cold so that when the samples are brought to the surface they don't begin to melt.
"If you have a record from just one place you can't understand the whole thing. It's like a puzzle - you need many pieces to form the whole picture," says Dan Dixon, Ice Core scientist.
The team say that what they will learn should interest everyone. And to the climate change doubters - it's pretty clear to a lot of scientists that human activity is affecting the climate.
"We're all going to be affected by the climate. We're all affected every day. Is it going to get more changeable? More variable, more extreme events," says Thomson.
The scientists have weeks more work to do, then samples need to be analysed. By the end of the year there will be a bigger picture of what the climate has in store.
