Ice Memory Foundation opens the first-ever sanctuary of climate archives in Antarctica

Ice Memory Foundation opens the first-ever sanctuary of climate archives in Antarctica © ENEA / Ice Cave - Concordia - R. Ascione-PNRA

As part of the launch of the UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025-2034), dedicated to the Poles and Glaciers, held in Nice on June 8, 2025, during the 3rd UN Ocean Conference, the Ice Memory Foundation announced two major and iconic initiatives in support of cryospheric sciences in 2025:

1. The first-ever transport of ice cores from mountain glaciers to the Ice Memory Sanctuary in Antarctica, at Concordia Station where they will be safeguarded for centuries, - November 2025.

2. A crucial expedition to Tajikistan - on the glaciers of the Pamir Region, Central Asia - that will attempt to extract two deep ice cores to measure and preserve the environmental and climatic history of this remote and vulnerable region - September 2025.

These two major milestones will significantly advance the race against time launched 10 years ago by the Ice Memory Foundation - UGA, CNRS, IRD, CNR, Ca'foscari, Paul Scherrer Inst.: to collect and preserve ice cores from endangered glaciers before they disappear. Preserved in the Ice Memory sanctuary in Antarctica, these precious archives will enable next generations of scientists to have access to intact climatic and environmental archives, enabling them to continue their research in the decades and centuries to come.

A historic journey ahead: first mountain ice cores to be transported to Antarctica

The first Ice Memory alpine ice cores - extracted between 2016 and 2023 - will leave the laboratory cold rooms of the CNR-ISP in Venice in October for a historic journey from Europe to the High Plateau of Antarctica where the annual mean temperature is -50 degreesC, a safe environment for fragile ice cores.

Leaving the port of Trieste - Italy mid-October, the first part of Ice Memory heritage will travel aboard the icebreaker - RV Laura Bassi, an Italian research vessel. The maritime shipping has been assigned to the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS, that will have the responsibility for the cold chain, keeping the precious archives under strict monitoring. After crossing the Atlantic and sailing to Christchurch, New Zealand, the ice cores will finally reach the Antarctic continent in early December, at the Italian Station Mario Zucchelli. They will then be transported by plane to the Franco-Italian Station, Concordia, enabled by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). Concordia Station is co-managed by the Italian National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA) and the French Polar Institute (IPEV).

"The transport of the initial Ice Memory samples to Antarctica marks a pivotal moment, truly bringing the project full circle. It conclusively demonstrates the complete feasibility of this vital endeavor to safeguard our planet's climate archives." said Carlo Barbante Professor at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, senior associate at CNR-ISP, Italy, and Vice Chair of Ice Memory Foundation.

This legacy will be safeguarded in the dedicated Ice Memory Sanctuary approved by The Antarctic Treaty System in 2024 (ATCM46) and funded by the Prince Albert II Foundation. In the form of a cave dug into the snow, the heritage cores will be stored at a stable temperature of - 50 degreesC, that will guarantee a long-term preservation of the samples using 100% "natural" storage with no energy consumption required for refrigeration, thereby protecting the precious samples from any risk of disrupted refrigeration (technical problems, human error, economic crises, conflict, etc.).

"My foundation has been committed with the Ice Memory initiative since its genesis in 2015. We have an historic responsibility today to engage with Ice Memory to build up a heritage of glacial archives for our children." S.A.S Prince Albert II of Monaco, Honorary President of the Ice Memory Foundation.

Dozens of other Ice Memory heritage ice cores from all over the world will join them in the coming years and a dedicated international governance is under construction.

"Thanks to this legacy, under international governance, next generations of scientists will be able to make new discoveries that will continue to guide policy decisions to build sustainable conditions for humanity", said Anne-Catherine Ohlmann, Director of the Ice Memory Foundation.

The environmental and climatic history of the Pamir glaciers - Tajikistan - to join the Ice Memory heritage

As a second iconic significant contribution to the UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences, the PAMIR Project, which brings together an international team of scientists, is preparing to carry out the extraction of two ice cores from the Pamir Region in Tajikistan this September. The project is led by the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and carried out with the Tajik Academy of Sciences as well as Swiss, Japanese, and American universities. It follows the successful mission at the Grand Combin, in the Swiss Alps, carried out by the Italian researchers of the CNR-ISP and Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

This drilling operation - funded by the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) with the support of the Ice Memory Foundation and its sponsor the Fondation Didier et Martine Primat - will take place in September on the Kon Chukurbashi ice cap, at an altitude of over 5,800 meters. The two ice cores are expected to reach a length of more than 100 meters.

Thanks to the commitment of the PAMIR Project scientific team, the first deep ice core extracted from the central Pamir region and from Tajikistan - a key climatic boundary of Central Asia and the so-called Third Pole - should join the global archive of ice cores heritage. Ice cores such as this contain environmental information preserved in air bubbles and chemical trace concentrations and isotope, as well as particles and possibly organisms trapped in the ice, offering a direct archive of ancient atmospheres of this region.

"This ice holds hundreds and possibly even thousands of years of physical records of snowfall, temperature, dust, and atmospheric chemistry," says project leader Dr. Evan Miles - from the University of Fribourg, the University of Zurich, and Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL. "We are racing against time to retrieve it before climate-change induced melt damages these natural archives forever."

One ice core will be analyzed as part of the research conducted by the PAMIR Project, involving an international team from the University of Fribourg and the University of Zurich (CH), the National Academy of Science of Tajikistan (TJ), the Univ. of Nagoya and Univ. of Hokkaido (JP), and Ohio State University (US), along with key technical support from the University of Bern (CH), while the second core will be added to the Ice Memory heritage collection in Antarctica for centuries to come. These samples will provide invaluable insights to help anticipate the future of our climate and inform policy decisions of generations to come worldwide.

The collection and analysis of these ice cores build on tremendous recent collaborative advances to analyze glaciers in the Pamir region, including researchers from the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan and Swiss scientists through the PAMIR project, along with researchers from IRD in France and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Germany through RECAP, a project focused on Fedchenko Glacier (now Vanj-yakh). Together, these studies provide crucial information for the current and future response of glaciers and streamflow in the region; the Pamir ice core plays a vital role to contextualize this within the climate and glacier fluctuations over the past decades, centuries, and millennia.

The Ice Memory Foundation has formally welcomed the Pamir core into its collection, emphasizing the urgency of this effort.

"We are thrilled to count on this irreplaceable archive from the Pamir and include it into the Ice Memory Sanctuary," said Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Stocker, Chairman of Ice Memory Foundation from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. " Today more than ever, we must protect the data that enables us to make science-based decisions—to better guide our societies, adapt to the global changes affecting our planet, and ensure that future generations are able to anticipate the profound transformations under way. This is a responsibility we all share", said Stocker.

Two strong symbols of international scientific cooperation, marking the launch of the United Nations' Cryospheric Decade

The preservation of Ice Memory from the Pamir glaciers and the rescue of this ice core heritage in Concordia is a powerful symbol of international scientific cooperation dedicated to the ice core heritage.

"We can all be proud — France and Tajikistan together — that at the launch of this UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences, such an emblematic cooperation is taking shape," said Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, French Ambassador for the Poles and Maritime Issues. This operation marks a true flagship initiative and a milestone at the launch of the Decade".