Our Changing World: A precious piece of sediment and what it says about our future

Follow Our Changing World on Apple , Spotify , iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts

It's mid-June and in a cold, echo-filled warehouse space on the University of Otago campus an international team of scientists and technicians has gathered.

For a moment the deafening sound of a diamond blade saw slicing through sediment and rock drowns everything, before the background chatter of different researchers hunkered over benches, discussing findings, re-emerges.

This is the Otago Repository for Core Analysis, nicknamed ORCA, and for these two weeks it is hosting a rare and hard-won core of sediment retrieved from under the ice in Antarctica.

A cylinder of sediment that the team hopes will help us understand what will happen as our climate warms.

The Otago Repository for Core Analysis (ORCA) is a specially-designed facility to allow this kind of work.