18 Jul 2025
Antarctica’s oldest ice arrives at British Antarctic Survey for climate analysis
*Media are invited to British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge on Thursday 17 July to visit the ice core and sediment core labs to see how researchers unravel Earth’s past and present climate change. Register now - details below in the Notes to Editors*
*Embargoed to Friday 18 July 2025 @ 00:01 UK BST
A consignment of ancient Antarctic ice, extracted as part of the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project, arrives at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge for detailed analysis this month.
The ice cores—cylindrical tubes of ancient ice – were retrieved from depths of up to 2,800 metres at Little Dome C in East Antarctica.
Extracted during the fourth drilling campaign of the project, these cores are expected to reveal a climate and atmospheric record stretching back more than 1.5 million years. Over the next few years, these samples will be meticulously analysed at laboratories across Europe, including at BAS, to unlock secrets about Earth's climate evolution and greenhouse gas concentrations.
Funded by the European Commission, Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice brings together researchers from 10 European countries and 12 institutions. The project’s ultimate aim is to reconstruct up to 1.5 million years of Earth’s climate history, significantly extending the current ice core record of 800,000 years.
Dr Liz Thomas, Head of the Ice Cores team at the British Antarctic Survey, said:
“It’s incredibly exciting to be part of this international effort to unlock the deepest secrets of Antarctica’s ice.
“The project is driven by a central scientific question: why did the planet’s climate cycle shift roughly one million years ago from a 41,000-year to a 100,000-year phasing of glacial-interglacial cycles? By extending the ice core record beyond this turning point, researchers hope to improve predictions of how Earth’s climate may respond to future greenhouse gas increases.”
Dr Thomas continues:
“There is no other place on Earth that retains such a long record of the past atmosphere as Antarctica. It’s our best hope to understand the fundamental drivers of Earth's climate shifts.”
The British Antarctic Survey ice core team are specialists in continuous flow analysis—a cutting-edge technique that involves the ultra-slow melting of ice core sections to simultaneously measure a suite of chemical elements, particles, and isotopic data. Thanks to their expertise, and support from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK team has been selected to lead the impurities analysis of the oldest Antarctic ice core ever recovered.
Until now, the scientific community has relied on marine sediment cores to explore the climate cycles over millions of years. These marine records play an important role in constraining the timings of glacial-interglacial cycles. The unique feature of the ice cores is that their entrapped bubbles capture the atmospheric conditions, changes in greenhouse gas concentrations and chemical evidence of the past temperatures at the time they were deposited.
“Our data will yield the first continuous reconstructions of key environmental indicators—including atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, sea ice extent, and marine productivity—spanning the past 1.5 million years. This unprecedented ice core dataset will provide vital insights into the link between atmospheric CO₂ levels and climate during a previously uncharted period in Earth’s history, offering valuable context for predicting future climate change” concludes Dr Thomas.
Ends
Contact Information
Emily Neville
emile@bas.ac.uk
Notes to editors
Issued by the British Antarctic Survey Press Office:
Emily Neville, Communications Manager at British Antarctic Survey emile@bas.ac.uk tel. 07514 623033.
Photos and video from the Beyond EPICA fieldwork can be obtained from the Press Office as above.
About the Beyond EPICA project:
*The Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice Core project is coordinated by Italy through the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (Cnr-Isp) and is led by Carlo Barbante, professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and senior associate member at Cnr-Isp, with a research team comprising 12 scientific institutions from 10 European countries.
*The drilling site, Little Dome C, is located on the East Antarctic Plateau at an altitude of 3,200m and approximately 40 km from the Italian/French operated Concordia Station.
*The project builds on the success of the original EPICA project, which retrieved an 800,000-year climate record from Antarctic ice in the early 2000s.
* The impurities analysis, led by BAS, is co-funded by the UK Research and Innovation.
Media day to visit the sediment and ice core labs at British Antarctic Survey
– Thursday 17 July, 10.00 – 3.00pm
Join us at BAS, Cambridge to meet a selection of researchers working on both ice and sediment cores from the polar regions to answer big questions about the past climate of Antarctica. Understanding past behaviour of polar ice can help researchers to understand what is happening in these regions today and make predictions for the future. The media day will include:
*tours of the state-of-the-art ice cores and sediment core laboratories
*access to the UK’s leading researchers who can explain how this vital environmental information is extracted from both ice and mud
RSVP to BAS Communications Manager: Emily Neville emile@bas.ac.uk
Story ideas include:
Beyond EPICA Oldest ice (as above): Head of the Ice cores Liz Thomas: https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/
RIFT -Tip: an ice coring project on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica trying to understand the fracturing process in the ice before a huge iceberg calves. With Dr Emma Pearson and Dr Oliver Marsh: https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/rift-tip/
REWIND: the big ice coring project for BAS next season that involves drilling a 700-metre ice core from the southern Antarctic Peninsula, to uncover changes in climate, wind patterns and sea ice over the past 20,000 years. Combined with a new record of atmospheric CO2 (extracted from the tiny bubbles trapped in the ice), the data will place the recent anthropogenic changes in context and explore the drivers of CO2 cycling in the Southern Ocean. With Dr Liz Thomas: https://www.bas.ac.uk/blogpost/the-core-of-the-matter/
SWAIC2C: The international Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2C Warming (SWAIS2C) Project is an exciting multi-nation effort to drill in the Ross Sea to answer the key question: does the Paris climate target save the Ross Ice Shelf and limit Antarctic Ice Sheet melt? This question will be addressed by recovering drill cores from the Ross Sea (Kamb Ice Stream and Crary Ice Rise) to determine how marine-based ice sheets respond to a world that is 1.5°–2°C and >2°C warmer than pre-industrial times. Ultimately, we hope to determine if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has collapsed previously, and if so, under what climatic conditions. With Dr James Smith and Dr Jim Marschalek from Imperial College Londonhttps://www.swais2c.aq/
Kang-Glac: the retrieval of sediment cores from Greenland to understand how decaying glaciers may behave in a warming world and the knock-on effects of this on ocean circulation and marine productivity. With Dr Kelly Hogan: https://www.bas.ac.uk/project/kang-glac/
International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration: sediment cores collected from Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica can reveal the past behaviour of this mighty glacier that’s the size of UK and what effect that had on global sea levels. Results of a 7-year collaborative project show how much and fast the glacier will retreat and contribute to our rising seas. The news isn’t good, it could be gone by 2100. With Dr Rob Larter: https://thwaitesglacier.org/
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