Stéphane Vannitsem

Two orchestras play from the same score, but in different keys. The score is the warm El Niño current, which every few years heats the tropical Pacific. The key is the regime in which the midlatitude atmosphere responds to that heating. One orchestra plays steadily and predictably; the other keeps stumbling, yet its playing carries deep bass notes that the first lacks.

On the coast of Dronning Maud Land, two ice cores stand like two seismographs on one shore. One, FK17, was drilled on the crest of the Lokenryggen ice rise; the other, TIR18, on the crest of Hammaryggen. A hundred kilometers apart, they catch different tremors of the climate. One hears the Pacific, the other the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.