1st February 2023 - Beyond EPICA: reached a depth of 808 meters in the Antarctic ice sheet
The second drilling campaign of Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice has been successfully completed. The international research project is funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR. It aims to obtain data on the evolution of temperatures, the composition of the atmosphere and the carbon cycle, by going back in time 1.5 million years through analyzing an ice core extracted from the depths of the Antarctic ice sheet. The complex deep ice drilling system was installed quickly, kicking off drilling operations and reaching a depth of 808.47 meters by the end of this 22/23 campaign. At Concordia Station, a support team processed and cut the first 217 meters of the extracted ice core
In Antarctica, the second drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, at the remote field site Little Dome C, has been successfully completed. This project is an unprecedented challenge for paleoclimatology studies and its goal is to go back 1.5 million years in time to reconstruct past temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations through the analysis of an ice core extracted from the depths of the ice sheet.
Funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and significant financial contributions from participating nations, the project will last seven years (starting in 2019) and is coordinated by Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNRISP) and a professor at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. For this project there are twelve research centers as partners, from ten European and non-European countries. For Italy, in addition to the CNR and Ca' Foscari University, there is the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), which is in charge together with the French Polar Institute (IPEV) of the logistics-related work module.
The activities of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project benefit from synergy with those carried out under the PNRA, the National Program of Research in Antarctica, funded by the MUR and coordinated by the CNR for scientific activities and by ENEA for the operational implementation of the expeditions.
From the end of November 2022 to the end of January 2023, in almost seven weeks of work, the international team reached a depth of 808.47 meters. At this depth the ice preserves information about the climate and the atmosphere of the last 49,300 years. Facing unforeseen setbacks and repairs to the drilling system and delays due to bad Antarctic weather conditions, the team worked hard for two months to nevertheless achieve this important intermediate result.
At first, the weather conditions at Little Dome C made field reopening operations difficult and delayed the team's arrival but organizing the work in two shifts proved successful to continue drilling operations for 16 hours a day without stopping. The project's final goal is to reach a depth of about 2,700 meters, which represents the thickness of the ice sheet underneath Little Dome C, a 10-squarekilometer area located at 3,233 meters above sea level, 34 kilometers from the French-Italian station Concordia, one of the most extreme places on Earth.
“This season has been intense but brought amazing results thanks to the team’s gigantic efforts: they worked tirelessly for two months at the Little Dome C camp. They first tested the equipment, and then progressed down to the remarkable depth of 808 meters and collected high quality ice cores. This will be the starting point for the next Beyond EPICA drilling season” said Carlo Barbante, Project Coordinator, Director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISP) and Professor at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.
As soon as the site was reached, the team's first goal was to complete the installation of the deep ice drilling system and fine-tune it to continue the drilling operations started in the previous campaign. The Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) drilling system was adapted to the ice conditions to achieve the best configuration for deep ice coring, using 3.5 m long drill barrels. The Danish drilling system has been used as a backup system to continue ice core extraction operations, while the engineers ironed out problems with the AWI drill.
In the last days of work, 4.5-m-long drill barrels were tested, and the result was unexpectedly successful: a single 4.52-m ice core was retrieved, the longest ever drilled as part of a European project. “This is a significant achievement for the AWI drill system: this is the longest core ever drilled by a European project. Its significance lies in the fact that at greater depths, where the time to winch down and up the borehole increases incrementally, being able to recover longer cores in each run means that we progress faster with the drilling, and should cut the time needed to reach bedrock, and the Oldest Ice" explained Rob Mulvaney, Chief Scientist for this Beyond EPICA drilling season and Professor at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and Frank Wilhelms, Chief Driller for this Beyond EPICA season and Professor at AWI, in the 47th Situation Report sent from the Little Dome C field camp.
This year, the first 217 meters from the Beyond EPICA ice core were also processed at the Cold Lab at Concordia Station, making observations on the cores and measuring its conductivity parameters as well as performing the first cuts. A part of these ice cores will be transferred to Europe for analysis in European laboratories.
A precious ‘ice core’
The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice, which can therefore reveal information from centuries and even hundreds of millennia ago on the evolution of temperature and on the composition of the atmosphere. Researchers will thus be able to assess the content of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere of the past. Then, they will be able to link these findings with the evolution of temperature. “We believe this ice core will give us information on the past's climate and the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago,” says Carlo Barbante. “During this transition, climate periodicity between ice ages changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years: the reason why this happened is the mystery we hope to solve.”
The 22/23 field season team
Here are the members of the 2022/2023 team: Frank Wilhelms, Matthias Hüther, Gunther Lawer, Martin Leonhardt and Johannes Lemburg from the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Germany), Robert Mulvaney from the British Antarctic Survey (UK), Julien Westhoff from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Romain Duphil from the University of Grenoble-Alpes (France), Romilly Harris Stuart from Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement and EU DEEPICE PhD candidate (France), Giuditta Celli PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and associated with the CNR – Institute of Polar Sciences, and Saverio Panichi, Michele Scalet and Andrea De Vito from ENEA — the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy). Markus Grimmer and Florian Krauss from the University of Bern (Switzerland) will provide support from the Concordia Station.
To learn more about Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice: linktr.ee/BeyondEpica_OldestIce
Photos and videos here
In brief
What: conclusion of the second ice core drilling campaign for the European project Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice
Further information:
Carlo Barbante, Project Coordinator, CNR-ISP director, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, e-mail: barbante@unive.itbarbante@unive.it
Chiara Venier, project manager of the Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice project, CNR-ISP, e-mail: chiara.venier@cnr.it
1st Dec 2022 - Beyond Epica deep drilling campaign begins in Antarctica
The Little Dome C site in Antarctica has reopened for the second ice core drilling campaign of the international research project coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR (National Research Council of Italy). By analysing the ice cores extracted from the deep ice in Antarctica, the project aims to obtain information dating back to 1.5 million years ago, regarding the evolution of temperature, the composition of the atmosphere, and the carbon cycle. The team includes 15 people and aims to start deep drilling to reach depths of a few hundred metres
As summer in the southern hemisphere draws near, researchers are starting to work again at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica. An international team made up of 15 people will begin the deep drilling campaign for the European project Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice. They will work for over two months on the Antarctic plateau at 3.200 metres above sea level, where the average summer temperature is -35°C. Over the next few years, the analysis of an ice core extracted from a depth of 2.7 km will enable the reconstruction of the world’s climate history, going back in time by 1.5 million years to discover information on temperature and on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This project is fundamental for paleoclimatology studies.
The project has been funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros. It is coordinated by Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISP) and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project involves twelve European and non-European international research institutes. On the Italian side, in addition to the CNR and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) is in charge, together with the French Polar Institute (IPEV), of managing the logistics.
The activities of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project benefit from a synergy with the research conducted in the framework of the Italian Antarctic Research Programme (PNRA), which is funded by MUR, and coordinated by the CNR (scientific activities) and by ENEA (campaign management).
Little Dome C is an area of 10 km2, located 35 km from the Italian-French Concordia Station — one of the most extreme places on the Earth. This year’s campaign will last until the end of January 2023.
“In the previous campaign, despite the prohibitive weather conditions, with gusts of wind and temperature almost always below -40°C, we set up a campsite that can host up to 15 people for a few months, as well as a complex drilling system,” says Carlo Barbante, who participated in the 2021/2022 campaign. “Our starting point will be 130 metres deep, which is the depth we reached last year. In this campaign we will conduct deep drilling. Our hope is to reach a depth of a few hundred metres by the end of January 2023.”
The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice, which can therefore reveal information from hundreds of millennia ago on the evolution of temperature and the composition of the atmosphere. Researchers will be able to assess the content of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere of the past link these findings to how the temperature evolved.
“We believe this ice core will give us information on the climate of the past and on the greenhouse gasses that were in the atmosphere during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago,” says Barbante. “During this transition, climate periodicity between ice ages changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years: the reason why this happened is the mystery we hope to solve.”
Here are the members of the 2022/2023 team: Frank Wilhelms, Matthias Hüther, Gunther Lawer, Martin Leonhardt and Johannes Lemburg from the Alfred Wegener Institute (Germany), Robert Mulvaney from the British Antarctic Survey (UK), Julien Westhoff from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Romain Duphil from the University of Grenoble-Alpes (France), Romilly Harris Stuart from Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement and DEEPICE PhD candidate (France), Giuditta Celli from CNR - Istituto di Scienze Polari and PhD candidate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), Saverio Panichi, Michele Scalet and Andrea De Vito from ENEA — the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy). Markus Grimmer and Florian Krauss from the University of Bern (Switzerland) will provide support from the Concordia Station
To learn more about Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice: linktr.ee/BeyondEpica_OldestIce
Photos: https://bit.ly/beoi2022
Videos: https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/outreach-communication/beyond-epica-on-youtube/
In brief
What: starting of the second ice core drilling campaign for the European project Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice
Further information:
Carlo Barbante, Project Coordinator, CNR-ISP director, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, e-mail: barbante@unive.it
Chiara Venier, project manager of the Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice project, CNR-ISP, e-mail: chiara.venier@cnr.it
17th Feb 2022 – Antarctica: working for 2 months at -40°C to complete the Little Dome C camp
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed. This international research project was funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros, supported by significant financial and in-kind contributions from the participating nations, and is coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Cnr (National Research Council of Italy). The project aims to obtain information on the evolution of the temperatures, on the composition of the atmosphere and on the carbon cycle over the last 1.5 million years, by analysing a deep ice core extracted from the Antarctic ice sheet. During the 2021/22 campaign, the team completed the field camp installation, set up the drilling area reaching a depth of 130 metres, completed the temporary storage cave, and installed the complex drilling system, which is necessary to continue this unprecedented challenge during the next few seasons
At the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica, the first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed. The campaign is an unprecedented effort in paleoclimatology studies, as its purpose is to go back in time by 1.5 million years to reveal invaluable information on temperature and on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the past.
The project started in 2019 and will last seven years. It is funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and supported by significant financial and in-kind contributions from the participating nations. It is coordinated by Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Isp) and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project involves twelve European and non-European international research institutes and will benefit from synergies with the French Polar Institute and the Italian National Antarctic Programme activities at the Italian-French Concordia Station.
From late November 2021 to the end of January 2022, the international team reached a depth of 130 metres, where the ice preserves information on the climate and atmosphere of approximately the last 3000 years. The first firn and ice cores of Beyond Epica are currently stored at the Italian-French Concordia Station on the eastern Antarctic plateau. During the next few years, these samples and the ones that will be collected during the next field campaigns will be transported to European laboratories. The target is to reach a depth of about 2,700 meters, the ice thickness at Little Dome C.
Little Dome C is an area of 10 km2 located 34 km from the Italian-French Concordia Station — one of the most extreme places on Earth. Glaciologists, engineers and technicians of the international team have worked at an altitude of 3,233 metres above sea level, over 1,000 km away from the coast, in one of the harshest places on the planet. Strong gusts of wind and a temperature almost always below -40°C, with lows of -52°C, made camp set-up even more challenging.
The main objectives completed by the Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice team, in fact, were the setting up of the camp, which can now host up to 15 people during the Antarctic summer, and the installation of a complex drilling system which is necessary to continue this unprecedented challenge during the next few seasons. The drilling tent now contains the control cabin, a tilting drilling tower for the maneuvering of the drilling system — which can extract ice cores up to 4.5-metre-long — and a laboratory for sampling preparation and storage. The drilling hole has been reamed and protected by a casing tube, two delicate operations that took several days to complete.
“We are very satisfied with the work done so far. Our next campaign will involve a final testing of the drilling system and then speedily proceeding to conduct deep drilling,” says Carlo Barbante, who is personally involved on the field in this campaign.
The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice, which can therefore reveal information from centuries and even hundreds of millennia ago on the evolution of temperature and on the composition of the atmosphere. Researchers will thus be able to assess the content of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere of the past. Then, they will be able to link these findings with the evolution of temperature.
“We believe this ice core will give us information on the climate of the past and on the greenhouse gases that were in the atmosphere during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago,” says Barbante. “During this transition, climate periodicity between ice ages changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years: the reason why this happened is the mystery we hope to solve.”
The other scientists on site were Thomas Stocker, Remo Walther, and Jakob Schwander from the University of Bern. The drillers were Philippe Possenti, Gregory Teste, Olivier Alemany, and Romain Duphil of the University of Grenoble-Alpes, and Matthias Hüther of the Alfred Wegener Institute. Logistics and telecommunications were managed by Michele Scalet, Saverio Panichi, Giacomo Bonanno and Calogero Monaco of Enea, while the electrification of the camp was managed by Olivier Delanoe and Anthony Pauty of the French Polar Institute (Ipev).
Photos : https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/gallery/
To learn more about Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core the field campaign 2021/22: www.beyondepica.eu/en/about/field-diary/field-campaign-202122/ and about the project in general: linktr.ee/BeyondEpica_OldestIce.
In brief
What: closing of the first ice core drilling campaign for the European project Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice
Further information:
Carlo Barbante, Project Coordinator, Cnr-Isp director, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, e-mail: barbante@unive.it
Chiara Venier, project manager of the Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice project, Cnr-Isp, e-mail: chiara.venier@cnr.it
30th Nov 2021 – Press Release for the starting of the first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice
Antarctica: Beyond EPICA exploring the climate of the past
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice is starting at Little Dome C, in Antarctica. This international research project is funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros and it is coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR (National Research Council of Italy). The project aims to obtain information on the evolution of the temperatures and on the composition of the atmosphere 1.5 million years ago, by analysing the ice cores that will be extracted from the deep ice in Antarctica. These data will be invaluable for predicting future climate trends and for implementing mitigation strategies
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice is starting in Antarctica at the Little Dome C site. The aim of the project is to go back to 1.5 million years in time, by sampling and analysing the deep ice, which will reveal invaluable information on temperature and on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the past atmosphere. This project represents an unprecedented effort in paleoclimatology.
The project, which started in 2019, will last seven years and is funded by the European Commission with 11 million euros. It is coordinated by Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISP) and professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project involves twelve European and non-European international research institutes and will benefit from synergies with the French Polar Institute and the Italian National Antarctic Programme activities at the Italian-French Concordia Station.
This campaign, which will last until January 2022, will be conducted at Little Dome C, an area of 10 km2, located 40 km from the Italian-French Concordia Station, on the east Antarctic plateau — one of the most extreme places on the Earth.
Glaciologists, engineers and technicians of the international team will work at an altitude of 3,233 metres above sea level, over 1,000 km away from the coast, and will experience average Antarctic summer temperatures of -35°C.
Once field camp installation is completed at Little Dome C, making the drilling site fully operational, the drilling system will be tested. While doing this, the team will also complete the construction of a temporary storage cave in the snow that will protect the first ice samples. The success of this campaign is crucial to the outcome of the entire project. There will be two decisive moments for the history of climate science: the first, will be drilling the pilot hole from which the ice core will be extracted; the second, will be the extraction of the first layers of ice by the end of this campaign. The team hopes to achieve an average coring rate of 170 m per week.
“During our previous EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) project, which ended in 2008, we managed to extract and analyse an 800,000-year-old ice core. Now we are trying to travel back further in time: because if we are to gain a correct perspective on what the world is currently experiencing with climate change, and adopt suitable mitigating strategies, we must look back even further — which is what we are trying to do in Antarctica with Beyond EPICA,” says Carlo Barbante, who is involved on site in the campaign.
The climate and the environmental history of our planet is archived in the ice: it can reveal information from centuries and even hundreds of millennia ago on the evolution of temperature and on the composition of the atmosphere.
Researchers will therefore be able to assess the content of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere of the past. Then, they will be able to link these findings with the evolution of temperature.
“We believe this ice core will give us information on the climate of the past and on the greenhouse gases that were in the atmosphere during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which happened between 900,000 and 1.2 million years ago,” concludes Barbante. “During this transition, climate periodicity between ice ages changed from 41,000 to 100,000 years: the reason why this happened is the mystery we hope to solve.”
The other scientists on site will be Thomas Stocker, Remo Walther, and Jakob Schwander from the University of Bern. The drillers will be Philippe Possenti, Gregory Teste, Olivier Alemany, and Romain Duphil of the University of Grenoble-Alpes, and Matthias Hüther of the Alfred Wegener Institute. Logistics and telecommunications will be managed by Michele Scalet, Saverio Panichi, Giacomo Bonanno of Enea and Calogero Monaco of the Genio Guastatori regiment.
To learn more about Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core: linktr.ee/BeyondEpica_OldestIce.
Photos
https://www.beyondepica.eu/en/gallery/
Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls_inIwtAZI
30 November 2021
In brief
What: Start of an ice core drilling campaign for the European project Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice
Further information: Carlo Barbante, Project Coordinator, CNR-ISP director, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, e-mail: barbante@unive.it, Chiara Venier, project manager of the Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice project, CNR-ISP, e-mail: chiara.venier@cnr.it
20th Dec 2019 - Press Release for the final site selection of the Beyond EPICA project
High-resolution geophysical survey confirms the deep Beyond EPICA ice-core drilling site
In the context of the European Union project Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice Core: 1.5 Myr of greenhouse gas – climate feedback (Beyond EPICA), experts from 12 institutions in ten European countries coordinated by Prof. Carlo Barbante from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (ISP-CNR) in Venice, have finally confirmed the site for future ice core drilling operations in East Antarctica. This final step follows the previous EU project, led by Prof. Olaf Eisen from the Alfred Wegner Institute (AWI) in Germany. The drill site is located at Little Dome C (LDC), an area of about 10 km2, 40 km away from Concordia Station at Dome C, the Italian-French base on the high Antarctic Plateau. Dome C is 1000 km from the coast, at an altitude of 3233 m above sea level, and is run by IPEV and the PNRA, the French and Italian polar agencies.
On 1st June 2019 the Beyond EPICA project started with the aim of drilling for and recovering ice from up to 1.5 Million years ago in Antarctica. The previous EPICA project recovered 800,000 years old ice. We want to go BEYOND that. “We hope that this core will give us information on the Antarctic climate and the greenhouse gases present during the Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which occurred between 900,000 and 1.2 Million years ago”, says Carlo Barbante, coordinator of the project. “During this period the climatic periodicity transitioned from 41,000 to 100,000 years between ice ages. Why this change happened is the mystery we want to resolve.”
With this goal in mind, the LDC area was selected after an initial period of coordinated actions, including more than 4,000 km of airborne and ground-based Radar Echo Sounding (RES) survey and basal temperature assessment based on vertical velocity and temperature measurements. All measurements were interpreted within a temperature and age modelling framework. These actions were performed in the frame of the previous EU project, led by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE) Over the last weeks, researchers from an international team composed of scientists from AWI, University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and the University of Alabama (UA) have finally scanned the area of interest and a group of experts precisely selected the exact site for drilling operations during the 2020-21 field season. Here, the characteristics of the deeper layers, with ice of least 1.5 million years old should be preserved with a good temporal resolution.
“It is the first time that a site for deep drilling has been selected with such a high precision and effort. The new radar measurement showed more clearly than before, that the ice there is well stratified and most probably very old”, says Olaf Eisen (AWI).
The whole project Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice Core has been funded with a 11 million € grant by the European Commission and will take 6 years in total to drill, collect and analyse the ice from this very deep hole, if everything goes to plan.
Contacts:
Prof. Carlo Barbante, Università Ca’Foscari Venezia (Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica) & ISP-CNR (phone: +39 041 2348942 barbante@unive.it).
Prof. Dr. Olaf Eisen, Alfred Wegner Institute (phone: +49 471 4831-1969, email: Olaf.Eisen@awi.de)

Figure 1. Top left panel: map of Antarctica showing the Dome C region (black rectangle). Top right panel: map of the Dome C region showing the ice core drilling area at Little Dome C (LDC) in the rectangle. Bottom panel: detailed map of the bedrock topography in the LDC area based on the new BE-OI results. LDC is located 40 km southwest of Concordia Station. The vertical white arrow indicates the most promising potential drilling site, as identified during the 2017-18 survey. Subglacial lake extent (dark blue) was inferred by high bed reflectivity and a flat radar reflection, and has been interpolated to give an impression of the extent and depth of lakes below the ice surface.

Figure 2. A high-resolution radargram in the vicinity of the confirmed drill site. It shows the traveltime of the radar wave on the vertical axis, with 30 microseconds roughly corresponding to 2550 m and distance along the line on the horizontal axis. The 1.5 million year old ice is located around 31 microseconds, where the well-preserved stratigraphy, visible as layers, transits into the basal layer, where not reflections are visible. The dark feature at the bottom is the bedrock underneath the ice sheet. (White dots at the bedrock and hyperbolas are artefacts from processing.)
4th June 2019 - Press Release for the start of the project
The Epic search for oldest ice in Antarctica is starting
On 1st June 2019 the European Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Core project started with the aim of drilling for and recovering ice from up to 1.5 Million years ago in Antarctica. The previous EPICA project recovered ice from 800,000 years ago. We want to go BEYOND that. We hope that this core will give us information on the greenhouse gases present during the Middle Pleistocene Transition (MPT), which occurred between 900,000 and 1.2 Million years ago. During this period the climatic periodicity transitioned from 41,000 to 100,000 years between ice ages. Why this change happened is the mystery we want to resolve.
To do this, experts from 10 European Countries and 16 different Research Institutions have joined forces under the guidance of Carlo Barbante and his management team at the CNR and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy, funded by the European Horizon 2020-research programme.
The drilling site, at Little Dome C, was previously identified by an EU funded geophysical survey project, led by Olaf Eisen from the Alfred Wegner Institute in Germany. The drill site was presented during an EGU press conference in Vienna on 9th April 2019. Luckily it is only 40km from Concordia Station, the Italian-French base on the high Antarctic Plateau at Dome C, over 1000 km from the coast and at an altitude of 3233 m above sea level, run by IPEV and the PNRA, the French and Italian polar agencies. Here on a balmy summers day the temperatures reach a maximum of -25°C, whilst in the deep mid-winter they drop to under -80°C. It may seem absurd whilst sitting on 3 km of water, but Dome C is as dry as the Sahara Desert, so snow accumulates slowly, gradually trapping in the ice the precious air bubbles we hope to analyse to find the atmospheric composition of the deep past of our planet. Careful analysis of the isotopic ratios of this ancient ice will be our deep time thermometer.
In the words of Barbara Stenni of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice “we hope to study the climate of the past to improve our models of future climate change.”
The whole project will cost around 11 million € and will take 6 years in total to drill, collect and analyse the ice from this very deep hole if everything goes to plan.
For photos, graphics and videos: www.egu.eu/gamedia/2019/documents/
(EGU press Conference in Vienna, 9th April 2019: under PC2: Beyond EPICA: The quest for a 1.5 million year ice core)
9th April 2019 - BE-OI press conference at EGU 2019
Ideal location for drilling oldest ice core found
Beyond EPICA presented the decision where to drill for 1.5 million year old ice at:
EGU Press Conference
Tuesday, 9 April, 09:00
Beyond EPICA: The quest for a 1.5 Million year ice core
Press release, presentation, images and video material available here

Selected drill site at "Little Dome C"
©PNRA, Luca Vitturani
