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An assistant professor in the department of earth science at the University of Maine, carefully measures each section of an ice core as it comes out of the drill on the Clarke Glacier in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Kreutz's research group took a 160-meter core sample to study the regional climate from the past 2,000 years. Scientists use ice cores drilled from the polar regions of the world to study past climate fluctuations. Scientists hope to be able to understand the mechanisms by which climate change occurs, and in the process, they hope to develop predictive capabilities for future climate change. The cores are recovered and studied for a variety of scientific investigations, most of which focus on the reconstruction of past climate states of the Earth.