US EditionScientists Open Ice Sanctuary in Antarctica to Preserve Melting Glaciers
The sanctuary stores 1.7 tons of Alpine ice cores at -52°C to preserve climate history amid rapid glacier loss, aiming to safeguard samples for centuries, the Ice Memory Foundation said.
- On Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, the Ice Memory Foundation inaugurated the world’s first sanctuary for mountain ice cores at Concordia Station, with scientists cutting a blue ribbon as Alpine samples were stored.
- Amid accelerating glacier loss, Carlo Barbante warned `We are in a race against time to rescue this heritage before it will vanish forever`, as glaciers have lost up to 39% regionally and about 5% globally since 2000.
- The snow cave is 35 metres long, about nine metres deep, maintaining-52°C naturally, after 1.7 tons of ice arrived from Trieste via RV Laura Bassi.
- Hosted under the Antarctic Treaty System, the sanctuary is intended to ensure neutrality with access solely on scientific merit, and aims to craft an international governance framework over the coming decade.
- Researchers plan to add dozens more cores from the Andes, Himalayas and Tajikistan in the coming years, and Thomas Stocker said `To safeguard what would be otherwise irreversibly lost... is an endeavour for humanity`.
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55 Articles
The first ice archive has been set up in the heart of Antarctica, near the Italian-French Concordia research station. It is designed to preserve samples taken from all the world's endangered mountain glaciers, including two specimens from the Alps.
The first global ice archiving site, called "Ice memory", was inaugurated on Wednesday 14 January in the heart of the white continent by European scientists. An urgent solution to keep the data contained in these cores, while almost half of the glaciers in the world could disappear by 2100.
French, Italian and Swiss scientists have dug a cellar in Antarctica to store cores of mountain glaciers, threatened by global warming, and to preserve the crucial information they contain.
The first ice core library in Antarctica to save humanity’s climate memory
Ice Core Storage at the Ice Memory Sanctuary in Concordia, Antarctica. Gaetano Massimo Macri/Ice Memory Foundation, Fourni par l'auteurOn Wednesday, January 14, 2026, the coolest library on Earth was inaugurated at the Concordia station, Antarctica. Samples from glaciers rescued worldwide are now beginning to be stored there for safekeeping. This will allow, among other things, future generations to continue studying traces of past climates trap…
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