Brussels, 28/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - As part of the PROMESS1 (PROfiles across MEditerranean Sedimentary Systems) research project, with a budget of 3.6 million EUR, including 2.7 million from the EU, European scientists have collected 500,000 year-old sediment cores from the Mediterranean Sea bed. These samples will enable scientists to piece together climate changes since prehistoric times, and thus provide the key to understanding current climatic phenomena. Ocean drilling is crucial in understanding climate change, because sediments hold archives of past climate developments. PROMESS1 involves French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and British partners.
From 24 June to 22 July, a European team of scientists embarked on a drilling expedition to the Mediterranean, between Brindisi and Barcelona. The aim of the expedition was to collect long sediment cores (up to 300 metres) for the first time, and measurements from two deltaic margins where the memory of global changes over the last 500,000 years is particularly well preserved.
PROMESS1 has three main aims: 1) to piece together changes in sea level and planetary changes over the last 500,000 years; 2) to analyse the effects of planetary change on the stability of slopes and slope processes such as underwater avalanches: 3) to understand the processes that form strata on continental margins, in relation to changes in sea level, ocean instability and processes, and recent tectonic activity.
Cross-examination of data from various sources will lead to a better understanding of climate change. Data from PROMESS1 will be compared with that gathered from ice core drilling.