In a thrilling milestone for the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project, ancient Antarctic ice has arrived at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Retrieved from depths of nearly 2,800 metres at Little Dome C, these pristine cylinders of ice are no ordinary samples; they’re frozen snapshots of Earth’s distant past.
This ice was formed over 1.5 million years ago, locking in atmospheric gases and climate clues like pages from a prehistoric diary. Now, scientists across Europe will analyze each layer with painstaking care, hoping to reconstruct how greenhouse gases and global temperatures evolved long before human records began.
It’s more than chilly science; it’s a voyage into Earth’s climate memory.
Backed by the European Commission, the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project is an extraordinary scientific collaboration that unites experts from 10 countries and 12 institutions across Europe. Their shared mission? To push the boundaries of climate history by analyzing the deepest and oldest ice ever recovered.
Currently, our most precise ice core data spans about 800,000 years. However, these newly retrieved samples could reveal up to 1.5 million years of Earth’s atmospheric evolution, more than doubling the current estimate of 0.6 million years. It’s a bold leap backward in time, with potential lessons for the future.
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.”
“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.”
At the heart of this breakthrough is the British Antarctic Survey’s ice core team, masters of continuous flow analysis, a precision method where ancient ice melts at a glacial pace, releasing a cascade of chemical clues. By tracking elements, particles, and isotopes in real-time, they’re revealing an archive that has been frozen for over 1.5 million years.
And here’s the secret sauce: air bubbles trapped in the ice, preserved snapshots of prehistoric skies. These tiny pockets hold direct evidence of greenhouse gases and climate conditions, far more vivid than anything marine sediment alone could offer.
Backed by UKRI and selected to lead impurity analysis, the UK team is helping decode the planet’s long-lost climate dialogue. It’s science that doesn’t just thaw the ice; it melts boundaries in our understanding of Earth’s deep past.
“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.”