Overview

• An international research team drilled 2.8 kilometers into Antarctica's Little Dome C to retrieve a 1.2-million-year-old ice core, the longest continuous climate record ever extracted.
• The ice core contains ancient air bubbles, offering a snapshot of past atmospheric conditions, including greenhouse gas concentrations like carbon dioxide and methane.
• This breakthrough aims to uncover the causes of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, a period when Earth's glacial cycles shifted from 41,000 to 100,000 years approximately 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.
• Preliminary analysis reveals high-resolution climate data, with up to 13,000 years of history compressed into each meter of ice, providing critical insights into Earth's climate evolution.
• The ice core will be transported to Europe in specialized cold containers for further study, with researchers hoping to better predict future climate changes based on past patterns.