Scientists on Jan. 14 sealed ancient chunks of glacial ice inside a newly built sanctuary in Antarctica, marking the world’s first dedicated archive designed to preserve rapidly disappearing records of Earth’s climate history.
The first two ice cores stored in the sanctuary were extracted from glaciers in Europe’s Alps. They were placed inside a snow cave at Concordia Station, a French-Italian research base located 3,200 meters above sea level in the heart of Antarctica. The site offers natural cold storage at temperatures of minus 52 degrees Celsius, eliminating the need for artificial refrigeration.
The sanctuary, carved about 10 meters below the surface, is a cave measuring 35 meters in length and five meters in height and width. Its stable freezing conditions are expected to safeguard the ice cores for hundreds of years, even as glaciers around the world continue to melt.
Ice cores are drilled deep within glaciers and compressed over thousands of years, preserving layers of dust, air bubbles and chemical compounds. These layers provide vital clues about past temperatures, precipitation levels, volcanic eruptions and atmospheric composition. Scientists say such data offers a detailed record of Earth’s climate stretching back millennia.
Thomas Stocker, a Swiss climate scientist and chair of the Ice Memory Foundation, which led the initiative, said the project aims to protect information that would otherwise be “irreversibly lost.” He described the effort as a responsibility to humanity.
The project took nearly a decade to complete and involved major logistical and diplomatic challenges. In the future, scientists plan to expand the archive with ice cores from vulnerable regions such as the Andes, the Himalayas and Central Asia.
According to Italian climate scientist Carlo Barbante, vice-chair of the foundation, the greatest value of the archive lies in the future. He said scientists decades from now will use technologies not yet invented to uncover secrets currently hidden in the ice.
Located on land governed by an international treaty, the Antarctic sanctuary is intended to remain politically neutral and accessible solely for scientific purposes. Foundation officials say this is crucial to ensure the ice cores remain available for future generations, serving the global good rather than national interests.
