IPICS White Papers

The future goals of ice-core research are outlined in a series of White Papers summarizing IPICS' scientific objectives. These are refreshed from time to time.

Current White Papers

1. The oldest ice core: A 1.5 million year record of climate and greenhouse gases from Antarctica (a time period where Earth's climate shifted from 40,000-year to 100,000-year cycles). This is the most recent version (updated in 2020).

2. History and Dynamics of the Last Interglacial Period from Ice Cores: A comprehensive record of environmental change during the last interglacial period.

3. Terminations and seesaws: An ice-core contribution to understanding orbital and millennial scale climate change.

4. The IPICS 2k Array: A network of ice-core climate and climate forcing records for the last two millennia.

5. Ice coring for ice dynamics: The role of ice-core sciences in the understanding of past and present ice flow (added March 2021).

6. Another critical element of IPICS is the development of advanced ice-core drilling technology. The technical white paper "Ice Core Drilling Technical Challenges" addresses this.

White Papers for completed IPICS projects

1. The last interglacial and beyond: A northwest Greenland deep ice-core drilling project (a deep ice core in Greenland recovering an intact record of the last interglacial period) - (2006–2013).

2. The IPICS 40,000-year network: A bipolar record of climate forcing and response.