An international team of scientists will begin drilling into the ice of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, in a race against time to collect centuries of environmental data before it disappears due to climate change, the Ice Memory Foundation announced Monday.
“High-latitude glaciers, such as those in the Arctic, have begun to melt at a rapid rate. We want to recover and preserve, for future generations of scientists, this extraordinary archive of our planet’s climate before all the information it contains is completely lost,” Carlo Barbante, director of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council and vice-president of the Foundation, said in a statement.
Eight scientists from France, Italy and Norway, a drilling specialist and a mountain guide will bring back two 125-metre-long ice cores from this region, which is warming significantly faster than the global average. One core will soon be analysed and the other will be preserved in a dedicated sanctuary at the opposite pole of the Earth, in Antarctica.
The team set up camp 1,100 metres above sea level in the endless whiteness of the Holtedahlfonna ice field and will be working there for 20 days, facing temperatures between -25°C and -5°C. Reaching the desired depth of 125 meters will allow scientists to study climate, environmental and pollution data from the last 300 years.
The Svalbard archipelago is a part of Norway, and it is disappearing 4 times faster than the global average. Just in the last 40-50 years, temperatures there have risen by 4-5°C. It is believed to be the fastest-warming place on the planet.
The research on the extracted ice cores is meant to help climate scientists understand why the Arctic is heating up so much faster than the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as "Arctic amplification". This occurs when sea ice, which naturally reflects the sun’s heat, melts and reverts to dark seawater, which absorbs more solar radiation and warms up the planet.
Related News
- Arctic sea ice is melting worse and faster than expected, studies show
- Antarctic sea ice levels reached record low in February
- New IPCC report: A grim and final warning on climate action
Svalbard is home to the world's northernmost permanent settlement, with around 2.500 residents and a constant inflow of tourists. The archipelago also hosts Norway's last coal mine, whose closure was postponed to 2025, due to the current energy crisis.
Launched in 2015, the Franco-Italian initiative Ice Memory, has already taken samples in the Alps, the Andes, the Caucasus, the Altai and plans to do so at some twenty sites over a period of twenty years.
