Overview
- Scientists inaugurated the repository on January 14, placing 1.7 metric tons of Alpine ice after a 50‑day refrigerated shipment from Trieste and a final flight to Concordia where storage holds at about −52°C.
- The facility is a 35‑meter snow cave excavated roughly 10 meters below the surface near the French‑Italian station at 3,200 meters altitude, relying on constant Antarctic cold rather than mechanical refrigeration.
- The first deposits are ice cores from Mont Blanc and Grand Combin, delivered via the Laura Bassi research icebreaker to Mario Zucchelli Station and then flown inland on an ENEA‑enabled cargo mission operated without cabin heating.
- Project partners plan to expand the archive with endangered glacier cores from regions including the Andes, Himalayas, Tajikistan, Svalbard and Kilimanjaro, with ten drillings already completed and more samples awaiting transfer.
- Organizers are pursuing an international governance framework to ensure neutral, science‑based access under Antarctic Treaty principles, following ATCM46’s 2024 approval of the site’s environmental evaluation.