1.2 Million Year Old Ice Melted

In January 2025, 1.2 million years old ice was uncovered from the East Antarctic Ocean. A sample of this ice was then sent to a research station in the UK. The scientists there want to melt this ice so that they can learn more about Earth’s environmental history and try to predict climate change in the future.

The research team is at the UK City of Cambridge and for the next seven weeks, they will melt the ice sample. The ice will contain ancient dust, volcanic ash, and tiny marine algae. These were all trapped inside when the water froze. These details of the ice help scientists learn about what the wind patterns, ocean levels, and temperatures were around a million years ago. They will also run tests on the ice core and perform many analyses on it. Their main goal is to know why the glacial-interglacial cycles of Earth increased from 41,000 years to 100,000 years about a million years ago, the same time the ice core was formed.

“This is a completely unknown period of our Earth’s history. Our climate system has been through so many different changes that we need to be able to go back in time to understand these different processes and different tipping points,” the head of the British Antarctic Survey, Dr. Liz Thomas said.

The Italian Institute of Polar Sciences led the international team that uncovered the ice. They managed to drill a 1.7-mile-long piece of ice from the ocean at a depth of 2800 meters, then chopped it into one-meter pieces. The chopped ice was then taken to many different scientific labs around Europe like England and Germany.

“So this is a really exciting project to work on because we really are exploring a completely unknown time in our history, and what we’re hoping is we’re going to unlock all these amazing secrets,” Dr. Thomas stated. The research team in England is very dedicated to learning as much as possible about the Earth’s past.