EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Beneath Antarctica’s endless white plateau, hidden deep within the snow, lies a priceless archive of the world’s climate memory.
The vault is not made of steel or concrete. There are no security systems or humming freezers. Instead, the sanctuary is carved directly into the Antarctic snow near Concordia Research Station, a remote Franco-Italian outpost more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the nearest coastline.
Inside the frozen cave, scientists are storing cylinders of ancient ice extracted from some of the world’s most endangered mountain glaciers. Within the ice are records of past climate history — from volcanic eruptions and wildfire smoke to industrial pollution and shifting atmospheric conditions stretching back centuries, sometimes millennia.
The project, led by the Ice Memory Foundation, aims to preserve pieces of these glaciers before rising temperatures erase them.
