24/7 Space News
ICE WORLD
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climate clues in old ice
By Umberto BACCHI
Brussels, Belgium (AFP) July 18, 2025

In a small, refrigerated room at a Brussels university, parka-wearing scientists chop up Antarctic ice cores tens of thousands of years old in search of clues to our planet's changing climate.

Trapped inside the cylindrical icicles are tiny air bubbles that can provide a snapshot of what the earth's atmosphere looked like back then.

"We want to know a lot about the climates of the past because we can use it as an analogy for what can happen in the future," said Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Zekollari was part of a team of four that headed to the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the world's oldest ice -- without breaking the bank.

Ice dating back millions of years can be found deep inside Antarctica, close to the South Pole, buried under kilometres of fresher ice and snow.

But that's hard to reach and expeditions to drill it out are expensive.

A recent EU-funded mission that brought back some 1.2-million-year-old samples came with a total price tag of around 11 million euros (around $12.8 million).

To cut costs, the team from VUB and the nearby Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where ancient ice might be more accessible.

- Blue ice -

Just like the water it is made of, ice flows towards the coast -- albeit slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a remote sensing specialist at VUB.

And when the flow hits an obstacle, say a ridge or mountain, bottom layers can be pushed up closer to the surface.

In a few rare spots, weather conditions like heavy winds prevent the formation of snow cover -- leaving thick layers of ice exposed.

Named after their colouration, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these account for only about one percent of Antarctica territory.

"Blue ice areas are very special," said Izeboud.

Her team zeroed in on a blue ice stretch lying about 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Belgium's Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station.

Some old meteorites had been previously found there -- a hint that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained.

A container camp was set up and after a few weeks of measurements, drilling, and frozen meals, in January the team came back with 15 ice cores totalling about 60 meters in length.

These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived in late June.

Inside a stocky cement ULB building in the Belgian capital, they are now being cut into smaller pieces to then be shipped to specialised labs in France and China for dating.

Zekollari said the team hopes some of the samples, which were taken at shallow depths of about 10 meters, will be confirmed to be about 100,000 years old.

- Climate 'treasure hunt' -

This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same spot for the big prize.

"It's like a treasure hunt," Zekollari, 36, said, comparing their work to drawing a map for "Indiana Jones".

"We're trying to cross the good spot on the map... and in one and a half years, we'll go back and we'll drill there," he said.

"We're dreaming a bit, but we hope to get maybe three, four, five-million-year-old ice."

Such ice could provide crucial input to climatologists studying the effects of global warming.

Climate projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- but the puzzle has some missing pieces.

By the end of the century temperatures could reach levels similar to those the planet last experienced between 2.6 and 3.3 million years ago, said Etienne Legrain, 29, a paleo-climatologist at ULB.

But currently there is little data on what CO2 levels were back then -- a key metric to understand how much further warming we could expect.

"We don't know the link between CO2 concentration and temperature in a climate warmer than that of today," Legrain said.

His team hopes to find it trapped inside some very old ice. "The air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past," he said. "It's really like magic when you feel it."

Related Links
Beyond the Ice Age

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters
Tweet

RELATED CONTENT
The following news reports may link to other Space Media Network websites.
ICE WORLD
Heat melts Alps snow and glaciers, leaving water shortage
Saint-Christophe-En-Oisans, France (AFP) July 16, 2025
June's heatwave has caused French Alps snow and glaciers to melt faster, causing water shortages at mountain shelters just before the summer tourist hiking season gets into full swing. "Everything has dried up," said Noemie Dagan, who looks after the Selle refuge, located at an altitude of 2,673 meters (8,769 feet) in the Ecrins, a mountain range overtowered by two majestic peaks. The snowfield that usually supplies water to her 60-bed chalet already "looks a bit like what we would expect at the ... read more

ICE WORLD
Jensen Huang, AI visionary in a leather jacket

Club Med taps ex-Carrefour executive as new CEO

New twist in EU-China patents standoff at WTO

Trump taps transport chief to be interim NASA administrator

ICE WORLD
Electrolyzer experiment from SwRI and UTSA to fly in low gravity test mission

Astronauts from US, India, Poland, Hungary on SpaceX capsule return to Earth

SpaceX launches highly secret Israeli communications satellite

Axiom-4 astronauts return to earth

ICE WORLD
Chinese researchers craft high fidelity Mars soil simulant to support future missions

Largest piece of Mars on Earth sells for $5.3M in Sotheby's auction

New Martian rock reveals clues about volcanic history on the Red Planet

Continuing the Quest for Clays

ICE WORLD
Six Chinese universities to launch new low altitude space major this fall

International deep space alliance launched in Hefei China

China launches international association to boost global access to deep space research

Chinese Long March Rockets Make International Debut at Paris Air Show

ICE WORLD
Globalstar selects SpaceX to launch final replacement satellites

UK invests $191 mn in European satellite firm Eutelsat

AST SpaceMobile adds 100 million in non dilutive funding to support manufacturing expansion

Rocket Lab clears key design milestone for SDA low Earth orbit constellation

ICE WORLD
New copper alloy delivers shape memory performance at extreme cold

Data centre focused REIT debuts in Singapore, biggest in years

Redwire integrates second Hammerhead satellite for ESA in-orbit tech mission

Morpheus Space completes orbital test of GO-2 electric propulsion system

ICE WORLD
Astronomers observe birth of a solar system for first time

James Webb reveals sub-Saturn mass exoplanet in young star system

How airports like Heathrow and Gatwick could help aliens spot Earth

Meteorite amino acid triggers nanocavity formation in common clay

ICE WORLD
Unexpected Dust Patterns Found on Uranus Moons Confound Scientists

SwRI study shows Europa's icy surface constantly reshaping

The hunt for mysterious 'Planet Nine' offers up a surprise

Jupiter Was Formerly Twice Its Current Size and Had a Much Stronger Magnetic Field

Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.