A Race Against Time to Save Alpine Ice Cores that Record Medieval Mining, Fires, and Volcanoes

A race against time to save Alpine ice cores that record medieval mining, fires, and volcanoes

Ice cores taken from glaciers reveal the air pollution of the past, using atmospheric particles incorporated in snow that fell on the glacier and became ice. Now, scientists have extracted a record of thousands of years' worth of air pollution from 9.5 meters of ice at the Weißseespitze glacier, close to the border between Austria and Italy. But this ice is under threat from global warming, and scientists warn that it is now a race against time …

Alpine glacier holds history dating back to the Romans. And it’s melting—fast.

Deep inside the frozen Eastern Alps, the Weißseespitze ice cap (pronounced VICE-zay-shpitt-suh) sits at almost 11,482 feet (3,500 meters) above sea level. Overlooking the mountainous border between Austria and Italy, Weißseespitze is an alpine glacier. It formed as layers of snowfall gradually compacted into dense glacial ice, trapping airborne particles that hold important clues about Earth’s past atmosphere.  The oldest ice contained in Weißse…

Race Against Time to Preserve Alpine Ice Cores Revealing Medieval Mining,

In the relentless pursuit to unravel the chronicles of our planet’s past climate and environmental shifts, a team of researchers from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Austrian Academy of Sciences embarked on a remarkable journey to the Weißseespitze glacier in the Ötztal Alps, straddling the border of Austria and Italy. In 2018, they drilled deep into the glacier’s icy core, extracting a nearly 10-meter-long ice sample that would soon re…