Press release : Searching for the world’s oldest ice

image_pdf

Why did the rhythm of glaciations suddenly slow down about a million years ago?

To answer this question and to better forecast future climate change, a consortium of
researchers from 14 institutions1, including France’s CNRS and IPEV, have set out to find
ice that is at least 1.5 million years old. With €2.2 million funding over three years under
the European Horizon 2020 program, this project aims to locate a site in Antarctica that
would date back to more than 800,000 years, the maximum age of the ice extracted during
the EPICA drilling carried out at Dome C. The studies will begin this year during the austral
summer in two regions of Antarctica: one close to the Fuji dome and the other near the
Concordia station. The French teams will test a new probe that dates the ice in real time,
without the need for coring.

Read the press release