Overview

• Analysis of a 40-meter Mont Blanc Dôme du Goûter core published in PNAS Nexus confirms the oldest intact Alpine ice record spanning the last glacial maximum through the Holocene.
• Ice-age dust levels in the Alpine core are eight times higher than in the Holocene and sea-salt proxies indicate stronger westerly winds over Europe during colder periods.
• Phosphorus concentrations trace 12,000 years of vegetation change, showing forest expansion in the early Holocene followed by declines linked to agriculture and rising industrial emissions.
• A 2,800-meter Little Dome C core has arrived at British Antarctic Survey labs for high-resolution analysis aimed at reconstructing up to 1.5 million years of temperature, greenhouse gas and marine productivity data.
• Belgian teams’ shallow blue-ice samples—potentially dating to 100,000 years ago—will guide future deep drilling efforts in Antarctica to access multi-million-year climate archives.