Editing Ice core (section)

== Future plans ==
[[IPICS]] (International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences) has produced a series of white papers outlining future challenges and scientific goals for the ice core science community.  These include plans to:<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/end-aff/ipics/white-papers|title=IPICS White Papers|publisher=PAGES – Past Global Changes|access-date=17 June 2017|language=en-gb|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011080822/http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/end-aff/ipics/white-papers|archive-date=11 October 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* Retrieve ice cores that reach back over 1.2 million years, in order to obtain multiple iterations of ice core record for the 40,000-year long climate cycles known to have operated at that time.  Current cores reach back over 800,000 years, and show 100,000-year cycles.
* Improve ice core chronologies, including connecting chronologies of multiple cores.
* Identify additional proxies from ice cores, for example for sea ice, marine biological productivity, or forest fires.
* Drill additional cores to provide high-resolution data for the last 2,000 years, to use as input for detailed climate modelling.
* Identify an improved drilling fluid
* Improve the ability to handle brittle ice, both while drilling and in transport and storage
* Find a way to handle cores which have pressurised water at bedrock
* Come up with a standardised lightweight drill capable of drilling both wet and dry holes, and able to reach depths of up to 1000 m.
* Improve core handling to maximise the information that can be obtained from each core.

A [[Climate change|warming climate]] is found to create glacial meltwater that washes away temporally ordered layers of trapped aerosols that researchers use as an historical record of environmental events.<ref name=PopSci_20240714/> The [[Ice Memory#Ice Memory Foundation|Ice Memory Foundation]] plans to store additional [[ice cores]] in Antarctica in advance of this impending loss of data.<ref name=PopSci_20240714>{{cite magazine |last1=Jones |first1=Nicola |title=The race to save glacial ice records before they melt away |url=https://www.popsci.com/environment/glacier-melt-ice-cores-artifacts-meteorites/ |magazine=Popular Science |date=14 July 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240716034852/https://www.popsci.com/environment/glacier-melt-ice-cores-artifacts-meteorites/ |archive-date=16 July 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>