An international team of researchers announced that they have successfully drilled a 2.8-kilometer-long ice core from Antarctica, capturing about 1.2 million years of Earth's climate history.
The European team spent four years drilling at the remote Little Dome C site, located on the Antarctic plateau in the eastern part of the continent at an altitude of nearly 3,200 meters. According to BGR, the ice core provides unprecedented insights into climate conditions more than 800,000 years ago.
"We have in our hands a piece of ice a million years old. You see the tiny bubbles inside, some bubbles of air that our ancestors breathed a million years ago," said Professor Carlo Barbante, coordinator of the project, according to BBC News.
The drilling project known as Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice aims to uncover the connection between Earth's temperature and greenhouse gases. By analyzing the trapped gases in the ice core, including CO₂ and methane, scientists hope to better understand past atmospheric conditions and their implications for today's climate issues, potentially revealing links to near-extinction events in human ancestry.
The team transported a large amount of equipment and materials, including drilling equipment, laboratories, and a camp, 40 kilometers over snow using sledges from the nearest research base to support their drilling operations.
"What they will find is an unknown, but it will undoubtedly expand our window to the past of our planet," said Professor Joeri Rogelj from Imperial College London, who did not participate in the project, according to BBC News.
Little Dome C experiences average summer temperatures around -35°C, making it one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. The unique environment, with scarce snowfall, allows ice to accumulate more slowly, providing ideal conditions for ice core studies.
The extracted ice core, cut into one-meter sections and transported in freezing conditions, harbors well-preserved samples of ancient air, volcanic ash, and greenhouse gases. This allows scientists to analyze atmospheric composition, including CO₂ and methane levels from up to 1.2 million years ago.
The most significant period of interest is the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which occurred around 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago when glacial cycles changed from 41,000-year to 100,000-year intervals. Scientists have long puzzled over the reasons for this shift, and the ice core could provide data to unravel this mystery.
"One of the hypotheses is that CO₂ played a role in this transition. That's what we will try to determine," stated Frédéric Parrenin, a glaciologist on the project, according to Ekstra Bladet.
"There is much of the past in our future. We look to the past to better understand how the climate works and how we can project it into the future," explained Barbante.
According to BBC News, the ice cores will be shipped to European labs for analysis. They must survive the long journey to Europe, maintained under a strict logistics strategy during transport involving the use of specialized cold containers and precise scheduling.
This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq