Antarctica Oldest Ice Arrives UK, Alps Ice Reveals 12,000-Year Climate

Scientists have retrieved and transported Antarctica’s oldest ice cores from Little Dome C to the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge for extensive analysis, aiming to extend the Earth’s climate record back 1.5 million years, nearly doubling the current record of 800,000 years. This international effort, known as the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project and funded by the European Commission, involves multiple European institutions collaborating to unlock secrets about past atmospheric temperatures, greenhouse gas concentrations, and climate cycles. Meanwhile, researchers analyzing a 40-meter ice core extracted from the Dôme du Goûter glacier in the French Alps have uncovered a 12,000-year record revealing extreme atmospheric events during the last ice age, including dust storms and hurricane-strength winds far exceeding modern levels. These Alpine ice cores provide the oldest known continuous record of aerosols and precipitation chemistry in Europe, capturing both natural climatic shifts and the impact of human activities from the Mesolithic period through industrialization. Together, the Antarctic and Alpine ice core studies offer complementary insights into Earth’s climatic evolution, natural atmospheric variability, and human influence on the environment over millennia, enhancing predictions of future climate change responses. The combination of advanced ice core analysis techniques across these projects highlights the critical role of frozen archives in reconstructing ancient climate conditions and understanding ongoing environmental transformations.