Earth’s Climate Records Are Melting

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By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: In 2019, researchers collected a 9.5-meter ice core from Austria’s Weißseespitze ice cap, which covers the top sections of Gepatschferner Glacier in the eastern Alps, near the Austrian-Italian border. They analyzed 18 trace elements and organic acids in the core to paint a picture of Earth’s climate and atmosphere over more than a thousand years. But Weißseespitze Glacier is melting quickly: As of 2025, the ice was only 5.5 meters thick in the area where scientists collected the core. “When this glacier disappears, we don’t lose only the ice: We’ll lose irreplaceable knowledge about the Earth’s climate history and how it has evolved and how human activity has influenced it,” said Azzurra Spagnesi, a paleoclimatologist at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia and lead author of the new research published in Frontiers in Earth Science.... 

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