Preserve the ice memory for future generations

As a second iconic significant contribution to the UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences, the PAMIR Project, which brings together an international team of scientists, is preparing to carry out the extraction of two ice cores from the Pamir Region in Tajikistan this September. The project is led by the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and carried out with the Tajik Academy of Sciences as well as Swiss, Japanese, and American universities. It follows the successful mission at the Grand Combin, in the Swiss Alps, carried out by the Italian researchers of the CNR-ISP and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

This drilling operation - funded by the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) with the support of the Ice Memory Foundation - will take place in September on the Kon Chukurbashi ice cap, at an altitude of over 5,800 meters. The two ice cores are expected to reach a length of more than 100 meters.

Thanks to the commitment of the PAMIR Project scientific team, the first deep ice core extracted from the central Pamir region and from Tajikistan - a key climatic boundary of Central Asia and the so-called Third Pole - should join the global archive of ice cores heritage. Ice cores such as this contain environmental information preserved in air bubbles and chemical trace concentrations and isotope, as well as particles and possibly organisms trapped in the ice, offering a direct archive of ancient atmospheres of this region.

“This ice holds hundreds and possibly even thousands of years of physical records of snowfall, temperature, dust, and atmospheric chemistry,” says project leader Dr. Evan Miles - from the University of Fribourg, the University of Zurich, and Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL. “We are racing against time to retrieve it before climate-change induced melt damages these natural archives forever.”

One ice core will be analyzed as part of the research conducted by the PAMIR Project, involving an international team from the University of Fribourg and the University of Zurich (CH), the National Academy of Science of Tajikistan (TJ), the Univ. of Nagoya and Univ. of Hokkaido (JP), and Ohio State University (US), along with key technical support from the University of Bern (CH), while the second core will be added to the Ice Memory heritage collection in Antarctica for centuries to come. These samples will provide invaluable insights to help anticipate the future of our climate and inform policy decisions of generations to come worldwide.

The collection and analysis of these ice cores build on tremendous recent collaborative advances to analyze glaciers in the Pamir region, including researchers from the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan and Swiss scientists through the PAMIR project, along with researchers from IRD in France and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Germany through RECAP, a project focused on Fedchenko Glacier (now Vanj-yakh). Together, these studies provide crucial information for the current and future response of glaciers and streamflow in the region; the Pamir ice core plays a vital role to contextualize this within the climate and glacier fluctuations over the past decades, centuries, and millennia.

The Ice Memory Foundation has formally welcomed the Pamir core into its collection, emphasizing the urgency of this effort. “We are thrilled to count on this irreplaceable archive from the Pamir and include it into the Ice Memory Sanctuary,” said Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Stocker, Chairman of Ice Memory Foundation from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland. “Today more than ever, we must protect the data that enables us to make science-based decisions—to better guide our societies, adapt to the global changes affecting our planet, and ensure that future generations are able to anticipate the profound transformations underway. This is a responsibility we all share”, said Thomas Stocker.

A strong symbol of international scientific cooperation, marking the launch of the United Nations’ Cryospheric Decade

The preservation of Ice Memory from the Pamir glaciers and the rescue of this ice core heritage in Concordia is a powerful symbol of international scientific cooperation dedicated to the ice core heritage.

“We can all be proud — France and Tajikistan together — that at the launch of this UN Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences, such an emblematic cooperation is taking shape," said Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, French Ambassador for the Poles and Maritime Issues. This operation marks a true flagship initiative and a milestone at the launch of the Decade”.

About the drilling operation in the Pamir Region

• Location: Kon Chukurbashi Ice Cap, Tajikistan (5800 m a.s.l.)
• Date: September 2025 to early October (5 weeks)
• Partners: Tajikistan Academy of Sciences, University of Zurich, University of Fribourg, Nagoya University, Hokkaido University, Swiss Polar Institute, Ohio State University, Ice Memory Foundation
• Outputs: Full-depth (~105 m) ice core to be analyzed and archived; second ice core to be sent to the Ice Memory Sanctuary in Antarctica

About the PAMIR project and the Swiss Polar Institute Flagship Initiatives

• Swiss Polar Institute granted CHF 1.5 million to the PAMIR programme. The research programme’s full title is PAMIR - From ice to microorganisms and humans: Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of climate change impacts on the Third Pole.
• The ice coring at the Kon Chukurbashi Glacier will be performed by PAMIR’s Climate and Environmental History Research Cluster: https://pamir-project.ch/research/climate-and-environmental-history/ during their field campaign planned in September 2025.
• The programme research consortium is led by University of Fribourg and WSL, and comprises 6 research clusters.
• Photos : Team members and Institutions
• As Swiss Polar Institute’s largest funding instrument, the SPI Flagship Initiatives are multi-annual programmes combining science and technology projects from different disciplines and different groups/institutions in Switzerland around a polar or remote high-altitude region.
• The funding is focused on field campaigns (logistics, safety, etc.), data management, outreach, and programme coordination, thus providing temporary infrastructure for a Swiss-led polar research programme.
• The PAMIR programme is one of the first two SPI Flagship Initiatives running from 2022 until 2026. PAMIR is a multi-disciplinary research programme with focus on the current state of the Pamir cryosphere, as well as its impacts on ecosystems, hazards and water resources.