Scientists race to read Austria's melting climate archive

Scientists are racing to read a rapidly melting archive of climate data going back thousands of years - the inside of Austria's Alpine glaciers. Mountain glaciers are receding the world over as average global temperatures rise - a phenomenon that will be described in detail in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week. Glaciers in Austria, on the eastern edge of the Alps, are particularly sensitive to climate change and have been shrinking even more rapidly than most, making it all the more urgent to examine their contents before they disappear, said Andrea Fischer, a scientist conducting the work.