Antarctica’s oldest ice arrives for climate analysis
A consignment of ancient ice from Antarctica, extracted as part of the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project, arrived at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge for detailed analysis this month.
The ice cores — cylindrical tubes of ancient ice – were retrieved from depths of up to 2,800 metres at Little Dome C in East Antarctica.
Extracted during the fourth drilling campaign of the project, these cores are expected to reveal a climate and atmospheric record stretching back more than 1.5 million years. Over the next few years, these samples will be meticulously analysed at laboratories across Europe, including at BAS, to unlock secrets about the Earth’s climate evolution and greenhouse gas concentrations.
Funded by the European Commission, Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice brings together researchers from 10 European countries and 12 institutions. The project’s ultimate aim is to reconstruct up to 1.5 million years of Earth’s climate history, significantly extending the current ice core record of 800,000 years.
Dr Liz Thomas, Head of the Ice Cores team at the British Antarctic Survey, said:
“It’s incredibly exciting to be part of this international effort to unlock the deepest secrets of Antarctica’s ice. The project is driven by a central scientific question: why did the planet’s climate cycle shift roughly one million years ago from a 41,000-year to a 100,000-year phasing of glacial-interglacial cycles? By extending the ice core record beyond this turning point, researchers hope to improve predictions of how Earth’s climate may respond to future greenhouse gas increases.”
Dr Thomas continues:
“There is no other place on Earth that retains such a long record of the past atmosphere as Antarctica. It’s our best hope to understand the fundamental drivers of Earth’s climate shifts.”
The British Antarctic Survey ice core team are specialists in continuous flow analysis—a cutting-edge technique that involves the ultra-slow melting of ice core sections to simultaneously measure a suite of chemical elements, particles, and isotopic data. Thanks to their expertise, and support from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK team has been selected to lead the impurities analysis of the oldest Antarctic ice core ever recovered.
Until now, the scientific community has relied on marine sediment cores to explore the climate cycles over millions of years. These marine records play an important role in constraining the timings of glacial-interglacial cycles. The unique feature of the ice cores is that their entrapped bubbles capture the atmospheric conditions, changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and chemical evidence of the past temperatures at the time they were deposited.
“Our data will yield the first continuous reconstructions of key environmental indicators—including atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, sea ice extent, and marine productivity—spanning the past 1.5 million years. This unprecedented ice core dataset will provide vital insights into the link between atmospheric CO₂ levels and climate during a previously uncharted period in Earth’s history, offering valuable context for predicting future climate change” concludes Dr Thomas.
About the Beyond EPICA project:
The Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice Core project is coordinated by Italy through the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (Cnr-Isp) and is led by Carlo Barbante, professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and senior associate member at Cnr-Isp, with a research team comprising 12 scientific institutions from 10 European countries.
The drilling site, Little Dome C, is located on the East Antarctic Plateau at an altitude of 3,200m and approximately 40 km from the Italian/French operated Concordia Station. Dr Robert Mulvaney from BAS was involved in the site selection for the drill site in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.
The project builds on the success of the original EPICA project, which retrieved an 800,000-year climate record from Antarctic ice in the early 2000s.
The impurities analysis, led by BAS, is co-funded by the UK Research and Innovation.