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 1^st 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)

On 1^st 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)

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