First Global Repository of Ice Cores: Preserving Earth’s Climate History

Context

As rapid global warming accelerates glacier melt worldwide, scientists have created the world’s first ice vault to preserve mountain ice cores as a permanent archive of Earth’s past climate.

About World’s First Ice vault

• It has been inaugurated on the Antarctic Plateau, providing a secure location for preserving Earth’s climate records.
• The initiative is led by the Ice Memory Foundation, with scientific support from leading institutions in France (CNRS, IRD), Italy (National Research Council), and Switzerland (Paul Scherrer Institute).
• Ice cores are stored at a naturally stable temperature of about –52°C
• The initial collection includes ice cores extracted from Mont Blanc (France) and Grand Combin (Switzerland), representing vulnerable alpine glaciers.

About Ice vaults and Ice Cores

• • An ice vault is a secure, long-term storage facility designed to preserve ice core samples extracted from mountain glaciers.
  • Ice cores act as a frozen climate archive, recording past atmospheric composition, temperatures, pollution levels, and major climatic events.

• Significance of Ice Cores

• • Ice cores are frozen climate archives, containing trapped air bubbles that record past greenhouse gas concentrations, along with layers of dust, ash, and pollutants reflecting volcanic eruptions and human activity.
  • They enable scientists to measure the rate of climate change and distinguish between natural climate cycles and human-induced warming.
  • Ice cores also help compare regional climate variations with global trends, improving long-term climate reconstruction and prediction.

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