From Antarctica to Brussels, hunting climatic indications in the old ice cream

In a small refrigerated room in a University of Brussels, scientists carrying a parka cutting ice nuclei in Antarctic of tens of thousands of years in search of climate evolution of our planet.

Trapped inside the cylindrical ice cubes are tiny air bubbles that can provide an instantaneous of what the earth’s atmosphere looked like.

“We want to know a lot about the climates of the past, because we can use it as analogy for what could happen in the future,” said Harry Zekollari, glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).

Zekollari was part of a team of four who headed for the white continent in November on a mission to find some of the oldest ice creams in the world – without breaking the bank.

Ice dating from millions of years can be found deep inside the Antarctica, near the South Pole, buried under miles of cooler ice and snow.

But it is difficult to reach and the expeditions to unravel it are expensive.

A recent mission funded by the EU, which brought back some 1.2 million old samples had come with a total price of around 11 million euros (around 12.8 million dollars).

To reduce costs, the VUB team and the free university of Brussels (ULB) used satellite data and other clues to find areas where old ice could be more accessible.

Blue ice

Like the water that is made, the ice flows towards the coast – although slowly, explained Maaike Izeboud, a teledeteration specialist at VUB.

And when the flow runs an obstacle, let’s say a ridge or a mountain, the lower layers can be pushed closer to the surface.

In a few rare places, weather conditions and the strong winds prevent snow blanket formation – leaving thick layers of ice exposed.

Named according to their coloring, which contrasts with the whiteness of the rest of the continent, these represent only about 1% of the territory of Antarctica.

“Blue ice areas are very special,” said Izeboud.

His team focused on a blue ice stretching around 2,300 meters (7,500 feet) above sea level, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the research station of Princess Elisabeth in Antarctica.

Some old meteorites had already been found there – an index that the surrounding ice is also old, the researchers explained.

A container camp was installed and after a few weeks of measurement, drilling and frozen meals, in January, the team returned with 15 ice cores totaling about 60 meters long.

These were then shipped from South Africa to Belgium, where they arrived at the end of June.

Inside an ULB Trapu building in the Belgian capital, they are now cut into small pieces to be shipped in specialized laboratories in France and China to go out together.

Zekollari said that the team hopes that some of the samples, which have been taken from the depths of approximately 10 meters, will be confirmed at around 100,000 years.

“Treasure hunting” climate

This would allow them to go back and dig a few hundred meters deeper in the same place for the Grand Prix.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” said Zekollari, 36, comparing their work to draw a card for “Indiana Jones”.

“We are trying to cross the right place on the map … and in a year and a half, we will come back and do so,” he said.

“We dream a little, but we hope may have an ice cream of three, four and five million years.”

Such an ice could provide a crucial contribution to climatologists who study the effects of global warming.

Climatic projections and models are calibrated using existing data on past temperatures and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but the puzzle has missing parts.

At the end of the century, temperatures could reach levels similar to those that the planet has known for the last time between 2.6 and 3.3 million years, Etienne Legrain, 29 years old, paleo-climatologist at ULB.

But currently, there is little data on what Co₂ The levels were at the time – a key metric to understand how much we could expect.

“We do not know the link between CO₂ Concentration and temperature in a warmer climate than today, “said Legrain.

Her team hopes to find her trapped inside a very old ice. “Air bubbles are the atmosphere of the past,” he said. “It’s really like magic when you feel it.”

© 2025 AFP