A group of University of Maine researchers who were injured in China earlier this month during a climatological research trip are home and recovering.

The five-person team, led by professor Paul Mayewski of the University of Maine’s Institute for Quaternary and Climate Studies, was driving in China en route to Tibet for several months of research when the car rolled over and several people suffered minor arm and back injuries.

All five researchers were “banged up,” and all flew home, Mayewski said, speaking from his office Tuesday.

Everyone should be completely recovered within a few weeks, he said.

The team’s Chinese partners are continuing the project without the Americans. They plan to drill into glaciers to recover ice cores that are tens of thousands of years old – important historical records of how the Earth’s climate has changed over time.

With a warming global climate and the development of uninhabited places increasing, the window of opportunity for collecting the old ice cores from mountain regions around the world is extremely small, Mayewski said.

A Maine team will likely return to Tibet in spring 2005 to continue the international research project, he said.