In a somewhat unusual project several ice cores taken from Col du Dome, close to the peak of Mont Blanc, and are in cold storage awaiting transfer to a purpose/built permanent storage bunker close to the French-Italian Concordia Research Station on the Antarctic Plateau.
The ice cores will be preserved in Antarctica, allowing future geochemistry studies into climate change as technology advances. The ice cores from Col du Dome are the first to be “rescued” from rapidly melting mountain glaciers worldwide. The project, led by Jérôme Chappellaz, Directeur de Recherche at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), intends to develop an archive of ice cores from Alpine and Andean glaciers, that may well disappear by the end of the century, preserving valuable records of climate and environmental change before they are lost forever.