evidence: Ice sheets have one particularly special property. They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air chemistry from another time[1]. Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back at least 800,000 years[2]. By looking at past concentrations of greenhouse gasses in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gasses to temperature. [...] The large Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have huge, high plateaux where snow accumulates in an ordered fashion. Slow ice flow at the centre of these ice sheets (near the ice divide) means that the stratigraphy of the snow and ice is preserved. Drilling a vertical hole through this ice involves a serious effort involving many scientists and technicians, and usually involves a static field camp for a prolonged period of time. [...] Ice cores provide us with lots of information beyond bubbles of gas in the ice. For example, melt layers are related to summer temperatures. More melt layers indicate warmer summer air temperatures. Melt layers are formed when the surface snow melts, releasing water to percolate down through the snow pack. They form bubble-free ice layers, visible in the ice core. The distribution of melt layers through time is a function of the past climate, and has been used, for example, to show increased melting in the Twentieth Century around the NE Antarctic Peninsula[8].