And now the ice will speak, the deepest one. It will reveal the secrets of our most remote past, it will tell us what the climate was like 1.2 million years ago. And how much greenhouse gas was there. In short, the “ice calendar” could also reserve some surprises. For example, detect ancient traces of “pollution” and, in a certain sense, exonerate ourselves from the role of planet-killer. Or exactly the opposite. Or even witness a warming of the planet before the ice age. We will find out this later.
For now let’s enjoy the satisfaction of having broken the glacial core drilling record. Researchers from 12 European Cnr-Ips institutes dug up to 2,800 metres, a depth never reached in Antarctica: they reached the point where the Antarctic ice sheet meets the underlying rock. In terms of time, they dug back to the pre-Quaternary period, when Antarctica was probably last ice-free.
Europe (and Italy) with the Oldest ice project have “beaten” the United States, China, South Korea and Australia, engaged in as many ice drillings. And, okay, science is collaboration, not competition. But.
«It’s a fair competition» explains the coordinator of the Beyond Epica project Carlo Barbante, professor at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and senior associate of the Cnr-Isp. «It is a historic moment for climate and environmental sciences. The ice core has a truly exceptional value for climate science and being able to obtain it also marked a first for research. Other international research consortia are trying to reach the oldest ice.”
The researchers worked on the drilling for more than 200 days in total, spread over four Antarctic summers, in a hostile environment at an altitude of 3,200 meters, where the air is very rarefied, and at an average temperature of minus 35 degrees.
The ice core, stored in refrigerators at minus 50 degrees, will arrive in Europe, in the German port of Bremerhaven, approximately at the end of March. It will be transported aboard the icebreaker Laura Bassi and transferred to various workers in Germany, Switzerland, France, Great Britain and Italy for analysis.
Researchers from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and probably Florence are already ready. «The preliminary isotopic analyzes conducted in the field on the ice core allowed us to monitor the drilling progress day by day and to synchronize this new record with the ice core previously extracted at Dome C and with the marine sediment records, thus establishing a preliminary time scale” explains Barbara Stenni, full professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
The last 210 meters of the core, the deepest part, consists of very old and highly deformed ice, probably mixed or refrozen, of unknown origin. Advanced analyzes could help test previous theories about the behavior of refrozen ice beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, revealing the history of East Antarctica’s glaciation.
«We can celebrate another extraordinary feat of scientific research – the owner of Mur, Anna Maria Bernini, comments on X – It is a mission of European scientists and I am very proud that the coordination is entrusted to Italian researchers, whose work and commitment
they are a source of great prestige for our country. This glacier is a sort of black box of the planet’s transformations and will also help us study new solutions to combat climate change.”