Scientists have begun analysing what is believed to be the oldest continuous ice core ever recovered, a 2.8-kilometre-long cylinder of Antarctic ice that could contain a frozen archive of Earth’s climate stretching back at least 1.2 million years. The “Beyond EPICA — Oldest Ice” project, led by a consortium of European research institutions, completed the historic drilling at Little Dome C in East Antarctica earlier this year, and the first detailed laboratory analyses are now underway in Europe — a process that could fundamentally reshape what we know about ice ages, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the future trajectory of the climate system.
The ice core was extracted from one of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth, where surface temperatures average around -35°C even in summer. Drilling reached bedrock after four Antarctic field seasons, an achievement researchers describe as comparable in scientific ambition to space exploration. The Beyond EPICA project is funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Italy’s National Research Council, with researchers from 10 European countries collaborating to pull the ancient ice from the polar plateau.
Why This Ice Matters
Ice cores are time capsules. As snow falls and compresses into ice over millennia, it traps tiny bubbles of ancient air, along with dust, volcanic ash, and chemical signatures of past temperatures. By analysing these inclusions, scientists can reconstruct atmospheric composition and climate conditions far into the geological past. The previous record holder — also drilled in Antarctica during the original EPICA project — extended roughly 800,000 years. The new core could push that window back by at least another 400,000 years, and possibly considerably more.
That extra reach is critical because it spans a mysterious threshold in Earth’s climate history known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Around one million years ago, the planet’s glacial cycles shifted from a roughly 41,000-year rhythm to a 100,000-year rhythm, and scientists are still uncertain why. According to reporting in Nature, the new core is expected to provide the first direct measurements of greenhouse gas concentrations across this transition, potentially settling decades of debate about the role of carbon dioxide in driving the change.
From Antarctic Plateau to European Laboratories
The core has been carefully transported in refrigerated containers maintained at -50°C to laboratories in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. Carlo Barbante, the project coordinator and a glaciologist at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, has called the recovery “a moment of great joy” and said the team expected the analyses to keep researchers occupied for years. Barbante and colleagues have noted that the deepest portion of the core may include refrozen basal ice that mixes layers of different ages — a complication that will require careful chronological work to untangle.
Researchers will measure isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen to reconstruct past temperatures, examine trapped air bubbles for carbon dioxide and methane levels, and study dust particles that can reveal information about wind patterns, aridity, and volcanic activity. The British Antarctic Survey, one of the partner institutions, is contributing expertise in ice core chemistry and chronology developed over decades of polar science.
Implications for Climate Science
The findings could carry significant weight for current climate policy debates. Today’s atmospheric CO₂ concentrations exceed 420 parts per million — already higher than at any point in the 800,000-year record from the previous EPICA core. If the new analyses confirm that today’s levels are unprecedented over more than a million years, this will reinforce the view that humanity is conducting an experiment without geological precedent. Conversely, any evidence of past natural CO₂ excursions would refine models of how the climate system responds to greenhouse forcing.
The first peer-reviewed results from the core are expected within the next two years, though comprehensive analysis will likely continue throughout the decade. As laboratories begin processing samples, researchers around the world are watching closely — not only to confirm the core’s age, but to see what stories its trapped air bubbles will tell about a planet very different from, and yet deeply connected to, our own.
For more stories on climate science, polar research, and the natural world, visit science.wide-ranging.com for related coverage and in-depth features.
