A team of researchers is set to begin drilling the ice of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard today, Tuesday 25 April 2023, in a race against time to retrieve centuries of climate and environmental data before it disappears due to global warming, the Ice Memory Foundation announced on Monday.
“High-latitude glaciers, such as those in the Arctic, have started melting at an alarming pace. We want to recover and preserve these extraordinary archives of our planet’s climate for future generations of scientists before all the information they contain is lost forever,” said Carlo Barbante, Director of the Institute of Polar Sciences at Italy’s National Research Council and Vice-President of the Foundation, in a statement.
The team, comprising eight scientists from France, Italy, and Norway, along with a drilling specialist and a mountain guide, will return from this region, which is warming significantly faster than the global average, with two 125-metre ice cores. One core will be analyzed in the near future, while the other will be preserved in Antarctica for future generations, following what is a true logistical challenge in maintaining the cold chain.
Une équipe de chercheurs va commencer aujourd’hui mardi le forage des glaces de l’archipel arctique du Svalbard dans une course contre la montre pour prélever des siècles de données climatiques et environnementales avant leur disparition sous l’effet du réchauffement, a annoncé lundi la fondation Ice Memory.
Ice Memory Svalbard 2023 final (1)
