The Australian Antarctic Division is gearing up to lead one of the most ambitious and challenging scientific projects yet undertaken in Antarctica – the quest to drill an ice core containing a million-year record of Earth’s climate and atmospheric composition. This record will help solve a long-standing mystery about the timing of past ice ages – why, almost one million years ago, the cycle between colder glacial and warmer interglacial periods every 41,000 years, changed to every 100,000 years. 

In January, Australian Antarctic Program scientists were on location at ‘Dome C North’ – a mound of ice in East Antarctica that ice-flow modelling and radar data shows may contain ice up to two million years old.

Over the past two years, teams have prepositioned equipment and drilled test cores at a nearby site. Now, drilling at Dome C North has begun in earnest, to retrieve the most detailed continuous record of how the Earth’s atmospheric composition and climate have changed over centuries.

Dr Joel Pedro is the Lead Project Scientist for the Australian Antarctic Division’s Million Year Ice Core Project (MYIC), one of the most ambitious Antarctic research initiatives ever undertaken by Australia. Appointed to the role in 2020, Dr Pedro leads the effort to recover a continuous ice core extending beyond 1.2 million years into the past—offering an unprecedented window into Earth’s climate history.

The MYIC project aims to provide critical insights into the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, a period when the timing of ice ages shifted from 41,000-year to 100,000-year cycles. Resolving the cause of this fundamental climate shift is a key scientific objective, with implications for understanding current climate change and greenhouse gas concentrations in a deeper historical context.

Drilling at the remote site—located over 3,000 metres above sea level, where mean annual temperatures fall below -50°C—began in 2021/22 and is scheduled for completion in 2025/26. The project is a cornerstone of the Australian Antarctic Strategy and 20-Year Action Plan, encompassing not just ice core recovery, but also the development of inland station infrastructure and scientific analysis that will advance global climate research.

With extensive experience in Antarctic science and climate research, Dr Pedro plays a pivotal role in pushing the boundaries of our understanding of Earth’s climate system.

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