Ice core drilling in Antarctica to discover environment evolution over the last 1,5 million years
The ice contains the history and climate of the planet.
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica – one of the most extreme places on Earth. Scientists hope to analyze a deep ice core taken from Antarctic ice sheets in order to gain information about the evolution of temperatures and the composition of the atmosphere over the past 1.5 million years.
Dr Robert Mulvaney, BAS scientist, was part the site selection team that spent three decades searching for the ideal spot to extract this ice-core. After Covid delays during the campaign 2021/22, the team completed field camp installation, set-up the drilling area to 130 meters depth, completed temporary storage cave, then installed the complex drilling system. The target is to reach a depth of about 2,700 meters, the ice thickness at Little Dome C – an area of 10 km2 located 34 km from the Italian-French Concordia Station.
This campaign is a landmark effort in paleoclimatology studies. It will reveal valuable information about temperature and the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in the recent past. The international team of glaciologists, engineers, and technicians worked at an elevation of 3,233 meters above the sea level, more than 1,000 km from the coast. Strong gusts of wind and a temperature almost always below -40°C, with lows of -52°C, made camp set-up even more challenging.
Carlo Barbante, Director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Isp) and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, is the project coordinator.
“We are very satisfied with the work done so far. The next campaign will include a final test of the drilling system, and then we will quickly move to deep drilling. We believe that this ice core can provide information on the climate of past and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere during Mid-Pleistocene Transition. This transition occurred between 900,000.00 and 1.2million years ago. During this transition, climate periodicity between ice ages changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years: the reason why this happened is the mystery we hope to solve.”
The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice, which can reveal information from centuries and even hundreds of millennia ago on changing temperatures and on the historical composition of the atmosphere – including levels of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
Dr Robert Mulvaney, who’s part of the Beyond EPICA project and who was involved in the site selection says: “I’m delighted that the drilling of the Oldest Ice Core is finally underway. It’s been almost twenty years since the first EPICA drilling mission reached the Antarctic ice sheet’s bottom at 3200m. This gave the world a unique record of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions over the past 800,000. We are now looking for older ice to better understand the changes in climate and atmosphere over 1.5 million years. We are finally on our way after three years of searching for the best drilling site. The drilling camp and the infrastructure for drilling are operational, although only 130 metres have been drilled this year. I am personally looking forward to next season when I will join the drillers to hopefully drill the next 1000 metres on our way to the bedrock.”
This international research project, which began in 2019, will last seven years. It is supported by substantial financial and in-kind contributions of the participating countries and funded by the European Commission with eleven million Euros. The Institute of Polar Sciences of the Cnr is responsible for the coordination of the project.
Thomas Stocker and Remo Walther, University of Bern scientists, were also present. The drillers were Philippe Possenti, Gregory Teste, Olivier Alemany, and Romain Duphil of the University of Grenoble-Alpes, and Matthias Hüther of the Alfred Wegener Institute. Michele Scalet and Saverio Panichi managed logistics and telecommunications, while Calogero Monaco of Enea managed electrification.