Touching climate change The scientists drilling for ancient data from glaciers

The scientists drilling for ancient data from glaciers

- Angela Giuffrida

Howling wind shakes the white tent, pitched among mounds of snow at a height of 4,100m on the Corbassière, an Alpine glacier on the northern slopes of Switzerland's Grand Combin massif.

Inside are scientists from Venice's Ca' Foscari university and the institute of polar science at Italy's national research council (CNR). They are camping here for 12 days, braving harsh conditions in temperatures as low as -20C as they work day and night to operate machinery that is drilling deep into the rapidly melting glacier.

Their mission is to salvage the Corbassière's remaining ice and unlock the precious trove of knowledge it holds about past climates before global heating completely wipes the glacier out.

The scientists do this by drilling a borehole and extracting long, cylinder-shaped ice cores - essentially centuries-old libraries containing records of pre-industrialisation greenhouse gases, pollutants, pollen and bacteria that provide information about historical temperatures and the impact humans have had on the changing environment.

The deeper they manage to drill, the greater the potential for older ice and its rich archive to emerge.

An expedition on the Grenz glacier on Monte Rosa in 2021 yielded ice cores containing climate information dating back over the past 10,000 years.