As global warming melts glaciers, a novel sanctuary in Antarctica is opening to preserve ice samples

ROME (AP) — Scientists on Wednesday inaugurated the first global repository of mountain ice cores, preserving the history of the Earth’s atmosphere in an Antarctic vault for future generations to study as global warming melts glaciers around the world.

An ice core is something of a time capsule, containing the history of the Earth’s past atmosphere in a frozen climate archive. With global glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, scientists have raced to preserve ice cores for future study before they disappear altogether.

The first two samples of Alpine mountain ice core, drilled out of Mont Blanc in France and Grand Combin in Switzerland, are now being stored in a snow cave at the Concordia station in the Antarctic Plateau at a constant temperature of around -52°C/-61°F.

The Ice Memory Foundation, a consortium of European research institutes, inaugurated the frozen sanctuary on Wednesday, after boxes containing 1.7 tons of ice arrived via icebreaker on a 50-day refrigerated journey from Trieste, Italy.

“By safeguarding physical samples of atmospheric gases, aerosols, pollutants and dust trapped in ice layers, the Ice Memory Foundation ensures that future generations of researchers will be able to study past climate conditions using technologies that may not yet exist,” said Carlo Barbante, vice chair of the Ice Memory Foundation and a professor at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.

The Ice Memory project was launched in 2015 by a consortium of research institutes: From France, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and the University of Grenoble-Alpes; from Italy the National Council of Research (CNR) and the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and Switzerland’s Paul Scherrer Institute.

Scientists have already identified and drilled ice cores at 10 glacier sites worldwide and plan to transport them to the cave sanctuary for safekeeping in the coming years. The aim over the coming decade is to craft an international convention to preserve and safeguard the samples for future generations to study.

As temperatures globally rise, glaciers are disappearing at a rapid clip, and with them critical information about the atmosphere: Since 2000, glaciers have lost between 2% and 39% of their ice regionally and about 5% globally, the foundation said.

“These ice cores are not relics … they are reference points,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation. “They allow scientists now and in the future to understand what changed, how fast and why.”