Peering into the thousands of frozen layers inside Greenland’s ice sheet is like looking back in time.

Each layer provides a record of not only snowfall and melting events, but what the Earth’s climate was like at the dawn of civilization, or during the last ice age, or during an ancient period of warmth similar to the one we are experiencing today. Using radar data from NASA’s Operation IceBridge, scientists have built the first-ever comprehensive map of the layers deep inside the ice sheet.

Release http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-data-peers-into-greenlands-ice-sheet