09 January 2025
Antarctica: Historic drilling campaign reaches more than 1.2 million year old ice
The fourth Antarctic campaign of the “Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice” project, funded by the European Commission, has achieved a historic milestone for climate science. An international team of scientists successfully drilled a 2,800-meter-long ice core, reaching the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. These ice samples are expected to unveil, for the first time, critical details about Earth’s climate and atmospheric history, extending beyond 800,000 years ago and showing a continuous record of the history of our climate as far back as 1.2 million years, and probably beyond. Coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Isp), the project aims to resolve one of climate science’s most complex mysteries.