Overview

• The 40-meter Mont Blanc ice core study published in PNAS Nexus supplies Europe’s first continuous 12,000-year record of aerosols and climate chemistry.
• Ice Age dust levels in the Alpine core are eight times higher than Holocene levels, and sea salt proxies point to stronger westerly winds.
• Alpine data also reveal a 3 °C temperature difference between the last Ice Age and the Holocene plus millennia of vegetation change tracked via phosphorus.
• Antarctic ice core segments up to 1.5 million years old have arrived at the British Antarctic Survey and are entering sequential melt-flow and gas analyses.
• Belgian teams are validating 100,000-year blue ice samples to select targets for future deep drilling aimed at probing the Mid-Pleistocene Transition.