Scientists recently celebrated an unprecedented sample in Antarctica

In the farthest reaches of the Antarctic, scientists have found a pristine sample of our planet’s history.

It is a core of ice that is 2,800 meters, or some 1.7 miles, long. But it’s not just height that matters. Ice contains pockets of Earth’s air that are stored in others 1.2 million years ago, if not more. Ancient ice cores have provided direct evidence of our Earth’s climate and environment since 800,000 years ago.

So, this is a big leap. The team drilled deep into the continental rocks.

“We have marked a historic moment in climate and environmental science,” said Carlo Barbante, polar scientist and coordinator of the ice core campaign called “Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice,” in a statement.

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An international team of researchers excavated the ice at the Little Dome C Field Camp in Antarctica, which is 3,233 meters above sea level. They shined radar down into the subsurface and used a computer model of ice flow to determine where this ancient ice might have been. And they were right.

This was not an easy thing. High on the Antarctic plateau, summer averages minus 35 degrees Celsius, or minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit.

Location of the Little Dome C research site in Antarctica. Credit: Beyond EPICA / EU

The Ice core was mined from the latest Beyond EPICA – the oldest Ice adventure. Credit: Scoto © PNRA / IPEV

Although paleoclimatologists, who study the Earth’s past climate, have reliable methods of indirectly measuring the depth of our planet – with proxies such as engraved shells and compounds produced by algae – direct evidence, in a specific spirit, is scientifically valuable. For example, past ice cores have revealed that levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere today are at their highest – the highest they’ve been in 800,000 years. Indisputable evidence of Earth’s past.

Scientists expect that this old ice, however, will reveal secrets about a period called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which lasted from about 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. Amazingly, the intervals between ice cycles – when ice sheets spread across continents and retreat – decreased dramatically, from 41,000 years to 100,000 years.

“The reasons for this change are still one of the permanent mysteries of climate science, which this project aims to reveal,” the excavation campaign, coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, said in a statement.

Now, the drilling is over. But the mission to transport the ice safely back to the research facilities, and study this more than a million-year-old phenomenon, has begun.

“The precious ice cores extracted during this mission will be returned to Europe by the icebreaker Laura Bassi, which maintains a cold range of minus-50 degrees Celsius, which is a major challenge for the operation of the project,” explains Gianluca Bianchi Fasani, head. of ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development) for Beyond EPICA travel transport.

These historic ice cores will travel in “special cold containers” as they travel around the world, away from the depths of their Antarctic home.