Preserve the ice memory for future generations

Launched at the end of September, following four years of cooperation between scientific organizations from Tajikistan and Switzerland, an international team from the PAMIR Project also including scientists from Japan and the United States, has successfully achieved its ambitious goal.

During a 3-week Ice Coring Expedition led by the University of Fribourg, they drilled and secured two deep ice cores, 104.7 and 105 meters long, at an altitude of 5,814 meters.

Located in one of the most remote and extreme environments on Earth, the Kon Chukurbashi ice cap is expected to hold at least 700 years of climate history and regional climate variations. Although the glaciers of the Pamirs have been resilient to anthropogenic climate change until now, the vital climate signals preserved within them are already at risk following a decade of hot and dry years - possibly a turning point for the region. These two first deep ice cores will offer major climate archives from this region which hosts some of the oldest glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Back from the field in Dushanbe and during a highly symbolic ceremony on the 13rd October, in favor of the ice memory of the Pamir Mountains, one ice core has been given by Tajikistan to the PAMIR Consortium for collaborative analysis; the second ice core has officially been given to the Ice Memory Foundation to safeguard it in a dedicated sanctuary in Antarctica, constituting a lasting legacy for centuries to come.

With this ice core, future generations of scientists will be able to access the climatic and environmental memory of the Pamirs, even if the extraordinary physical archive of glacier ice, full of incredible details about the evolution of the Central Asian climate, has disappeared due to climate change.

The Pamir ice coring expedition brought together fifteen scientists including two from the Tajik Academy of Sciences, one from the Tajik Agency of Hydrometeorology, six from Japan, three from Switzerland, and others from Russia and the US in the heart of the Murgab Region.

Thanks to the support of eight Tajik mountain porters, they succeeded in safely transporting about 800 kilograms of equipment, food, tents and the driller from a base camp at 5100 m to set up the drilling site (5814m).

This high-altitude operation required a careful acclimatization to overcome the reduced oxygen levels, which could lead to dangerous medical complications of acute mountain sickness.

While the drill was conducted using a solar-powered, optimized for altitude, the team operated in conditions where daytime temperatures dropped as low as -16°C. The team was further challenged by sustained winds of up to 10m/s and one snowstorm, which initially limited progress. The first core of 104,7 m length was extracted under stable weather conditions on the 27th September, after four days. The second core of 105 m length was extracted a few days later, on 30 September.

Following extraction, the ice cores were securely transported back to Karakul village using insulated boxes, then placed in refrigerated trucks bound for Dushanbe. This four-day transport was not without further difficulties; the rugged Pamir Highway damaged the truck suspension and caused tire blowouts along the way. Nevertheless, the ice was successfully brought to Dushanbe, where it is temporarily stored at -30°C.