Ancient Ice

Imagine the Earth a million years ago. Was it warmer? Colder? Was the air different? To find out, a group of scientists took a peek back in time. But they didn’t use a time machine. They used ancient ice.

The international scientists worked on a project called Beyond EPICA. They traveled to a field camp × field camp a base where scientific research can be conducted (noun) in Antarctica. The continent is covered in ice—it’s the coldest place on Earth.

IN THE FIELD This aerial view shows the Beyond EPICA hub Little Dome C field base, in Antarctica.

Blast from the Past

The team’s goal was to study the oldest ice they could find. Scientists and support workers drilled deep into the ground. They worked only during the Antarctic summer, when the cold is less extreme. (They still worked in average temperatures of about -25°F.)

Work began in 2019. It took four summers. By January 2025, the team had drilled about two miles down and extracted a long cylinder of ice. Some sections of that ice core are more than a million years old. Even more exciting: The ice core holds a continuous × continuous without interruption (adjective) record of the Earth’s atmosphere. That record goes back 1.2 million years.

Chiara Venier is a Beyond EPICA scientist. She told TFK the ice holds important clues to how Earth’s climate has changed over time. These clues could help “people and governments make smarter choices to protect our planet,” Venier says.

Dorothea Moser works with the British Antarctic Survey. She’s now studying the ice core. She told TFK that it’s full of history. It holds air bubbles with “direct samples of the air of the past.” The core is cut into segments from different periods of time. Moser and others will melt the segments. Then they’ll study them to uncover their secrets.