Rapid Fire
World’s First Repository of Mountain Ice Cores
- 17 Jan 2026
- 2 min read
Recently, scientists inaugurated the world’s first global repository of mountain ice cores at Concordia Research Station on the Antarctic Plateau to preserve vital climate records threatened by rapid glacier loss due to global warming.
- The facility, known as the Ice Memory Sanctuary, has been developed by the Ice Memory Foundation, a consortium of European research institutions from France, Italy, and Switzerland.
- The ice vault is a cave carved into compacted snow and maintained at a constant temperature of around –52°C, ensuring long-term preservation of ice cores for future scientific research.
- The first ice cores stored in the sanctuary were drilled from Mont Blanc in France and the Grand Combin massif in Switzerland, and transported to Antarctica over a 50-day journey using refrigerated ships and aircraft.
- Ice cores act as atmospheric time capsules, formed through long-term compaction of snow and preserving traces of gases, aerosols, dust, pollutants, and other indicators of past climate conditions.
- These samples enable scientists to reconstruct historical changes in climate, including atmospheric composition, environmental pollution, and the pace and causes of climate change across centuries.
- The Ice Memory project, launched in 2015, has already identified and drilled cores from 10 glacier sites worldwide, with plans to expand storage and establish an international convention over the next decade to safeguard these samples for future generations.
| Read more: India's Tryst with Antarctica |
