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Scientists drill 2 miles down pull 1.2M-year-old ice core from Antarctic

An international team of scientists announced Thursday they’ve successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores yet, penetrating nearly 2 miles (2.8 kilometers) to Antarctic bedrock to reach ice they say is at least 1.2 million years old.

An ice core drilled by a research team is displayed at Little Dome C field base in eastern Antarctica, during the cutting phase on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. Both Barbante and Scoto said that thanks to the analysis of the ice core of the previous Epica campaign they have assessed that concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, even during the warmest periods of the last 800,000 years, have never exceeded the levels seen since the Industrial Revolution began. The announcement was exciting to Richard Alley, a climate scientist at Penn State who was not involved with the project and who was recently awarded the National Medal of Science for his career studying ice sheets.

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