Research topics

The activities of the team, created in 2014, have a strong coherence on the study of ice cores - relationship between atmospheric composition and climate, past and present.

Axis 1 : climate variability and forcings

In the current context of climate crisis, even if the objective of the COP21 in Paris to limit global warming to 2°C is achieved, the long-response components of the Earth system such as the ocean, the cryosphere or the carbon cycle will continue to evolve for centuries. To assess the ability of models to predict future climate change, Quaternary paleoclimates provide valuable test configurations in which the position of the continents is stable.

Axis 1 is particularly aimed at elucidating the behavior of slow response compartments of the climate system (carbon cycle, ice caps, ocean). This represents a major challenge for forecasting the climate for the next few centuries and for developing effective adaptation strategies.

A major focus of our research aims to precisely document and understand the climatic sequences in the phases of major warming and hot periods (MOPGA-HOTCLIM 2020-2025).

This project will prepare the European project Beyond EPICA Oldest ice. The site selected for this drilling, which should cover 1.5 million years, is located 40 km from the Franco-Italian Concordia station, which implies a strong French contribution to logistics (IPEV), and to drilling (F2G). The mid-Pleistocene transition (between 1.2 and 0.9 million years ago) led to a strong change in glacial-interglacial cyclicity from 40,000 to 100,000 years and a sharp increase in the amplitude of the cycles. It will make it possible to evaluate two major hypotheses, possibly combined, which are put forward to explain it : a change in radiative forcing (greenhouse gases, aerosols) or a change linked to the dynamics of the large ice caps in the North hemisphere.

In addition, our participation in the European educational network DEEPICE will boost the team’s positioning on glaciological models of synchronized dating of ice cores as well as firn physics and gas trapping. It will also strengthen our links with the climate and carbon cycle modeling community.

The spatial variability of the glaciological records will be documented with the analysis of the ice cores from project EAIIST. During the austral summer of 2019-2020, a vast region of the East Antarctic Plateau was surveyed including areas of megadunes and wind glazed surfaces. Shallow boreholes will allow the study of archiving processes and fine-scale spatial variability (of the order of ten meters) in very low or even negative accumulation zones. It is indeed possible that deep drilling sites like Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice experienced conditions similar to megadunes during ice ages undergoing half of present accumulation.

Axis 2 : variability of atmospheric composition and anthropization

Axis 2 focuses on the reconstruction of major biogeochemical cycles, with an emphasis on the constraint of emission sources and spatialization by multi-site approaches.

The ICE MEMORY project provides access to glacial archives spatially distributed on mountain sites of major interest (Col du Dôme on Mont Blanc, Illimani in Bolivia, Elbrouz in the Caucasus, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mera in Nepal ...). It will produce a database of main geochemical markers, and support the analytical development of specific tracers on the analytical platform PANDA. Its research component will particularly aim to identify the sources of emission (biomass fires, volcanism, mining activity, transport, industry, etc.) by broadening the spectrum of measured tracers and their source-receptor statistical processing.

The joint exploitation of data from the EAIIST and CAPOXI will be a unifying element of this axis. The objective here is to understand the highly oxidizing atmosphere of the Antarctic plateau and the link with the archiving of information in ice. A central element will aim to assess the impact of human activities around the Concordia station as several indicators converge towards the presence of significant pollution. The simultaneous collection of similar parameters between virgin land traveled by the EAIIST caravan and the Concordia station should make it possible to highlight the disparities in behavior.

Development of innovative instruments

The two research axes involve important instrumental developments, both in the laboratory within the analytical platform PANDA and in the field with probes such as SUBGLACIOR and SUBOCEAN.