News

• Ice core site considerations from modeling CO2 and O2 ∕ N2 ratio diffusion in interior East Antarctica (11/24/25): New paper in Climate of the Past, led by Marc Sailer!

• The field team has arrived at the Allan Hills, Antarctica! Follow their progress on instagram @coldex_stc or through our newsletter. (11/15/25)

• Six-million-year-old ice discovered in Antarctica offers unprecedented window into a warmer Earth (10/28/25): New COLDEX paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by Sarah Shackleton, describes the oldest ice ever found on the planet!

• While Searching for the World’s Oldest Ice, Scientists Find Sediment Sneaking Under the Antarctic Ice Sheet (10/20/25): Featuring a new COLDEX paper in Geophysical Research Letters led by Duncan Young.

• Congratulations to COLDEXer Fairuz Ishraque, who received an AGU Voices for Science Award! (7/14/25)

• Congratulations to former COLDEX REU, Alissa Choi, who was selected as a 2025 Goldwater Scholar! (3/28/25)

• Congratulations to former COLDEX REU, Rhys-Jasper León, who won an Outstanding Student Presentation Award for the cryosphere section at AGU 2024! (3/28/25)

• Congratulations to COLDEXer Jamin Greenbaum, an honoree of The Explorers Club 50! Meet the EC50 Class of 2025 (Explorer’s Club, 1/31/25)

• Breakthrough Antarctic ice extraction 'an enormous victory,' U of Manitoba researcher says (CBC, 1/9/25): featuring John Higgins.

• Huntington man braves Antarctica to research how ancient ice reveals Earth's climate history (Newsday, 12/14/24): featuring Jacob Chalif. Watch accompanying video here!

• Bangladeshi scientist Fairuz selected for US Antarctic Program (The Daily Star, 11/21/24): Featuring Fairuz Ishraque

• Dartmouth grad student in Antarctica praises food at camp (WCAX, 12/8/24): featuring Jacob Chalif.

• Dartmouth grad student in Antarctica to collect the planet’s oldest ice cores (WCAX, 12/5/24): featuring Jacob Chalif. Also covered on WHDH Boston.

• History Trapped in Ice (Discovery Files Podcast, 11/24/24): featuring Peter Neff

• COLDEX will have a big presence at the AGU 2024 meeting! Check out the list of presentations here.

• Scientists become a source of hope and information on TikTok, Instagram (LA Times, 9/12/24)

• Congratulations to COLDEXer Fairuz Ishraque, graduate student at Princeton, who has been selected as the 2024 UCAR Next Generation Science Fellow! Ishraque will be working with NCAR’s Climate and Global Dynamics Lab to reconstruct glacial and climate history of Allan Hills with their Community Ice Sheet Model and the Community Earth Systems Model.

• Anticipating Antarctica (Strata, Spring/Summer 2024): by Julia Marks Peterson

• A Week at the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (CEOAS Chronicles, 5/21/24): blog post by Olivia Williams

• COLDEX Director for Knowledge Transfer Dr. Heidi Roop will spend the next year serving as the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Deputy Director for Services and the Assistant Director for Climate Services at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. During her time away, Dr. Peter Neff will serve as the COLDEX Interim Director for Knowledge Transfer.

• Ice to know you (Denver 8, 5/19/24): Featuring the NSF Ice Core Facility and Olivia Williams

• Oldest ever ice offers glimpse of earth before the ice ages (Science, 4/22/24)

• According to the Record: 30 minute radio show with Shravan Kaundinya (101.7 FM 1320 KLWN Radio-Great Plains Media, 2/24)

• How Antarctica’s history of isolation is ending—thanks to Starlink (MIT Technology Review, 2/26/24)

• Congratulations to COLDEX alum Ellen Mutter, who was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Ellen was a postbaccalaureate researcher at Amherst College, working with Nick Holschuh, and is now a PhD student in the Cornell Hydrology, Ice, and Radar Physics Lab at Cornell University. 

• COLDEX will be well represented at the upcoming EGU General Assembly 2024 in Vienna, Austria. See the list of COLDEX presentations here.

• Michigan native goes viral on TikTok sharing journey in Antarctica during research trip (WXYZ Detroit, 1/24/24): Featuring Austin Carter

• Live: What Polar Ice Cores Tell Us About Our Climate (NSF webinar, 1/18/24): Featuring Richard Nunn

• The ‘Climate Action Handbook’ is a guide to protecting the climate (Yale Climate Connections, 1/3/24): Featuring Heidi Roop

• American scientists explore Antarctica for oldest-ever ice to help understand climate change (CBS News, 12/26/23)

• Frozen in Time (10/20/23): Fall 2023 issue of Oregon Stater magazine

• COLDEX will be well represented at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting! Check out the list of COLDEXers presenting research here.

• Congratulations to Cate Bruns, who was awarded the first annual COLDEX Inclusive Leadership Award! The COLDEX Inclusive Leadership Award recognizes exemplary leadership in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the COLDEX community and beyond. Cate developed and delivered a science communication workshop for COLDEX REU students during the pilot summer, served as a member of the DEI committee, and is a frequent contributor to improving important documentation in COLDEX. Cate is a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota working with Heidi Roop, and she will receive a $1,000 award toward a COLDEX-related research, outreach, or DEI activity or event, as well as travel and housing for the next COLDEX annual meeting. 

• Ian Rampton will present a poster about his COLDEX REU research (co-authored by Eric Saltzman and Jenn Campos Ayala, UC Irvine) at The GSA Connects 2023 Meeting in Pittsburg, PA. Be sure to check it out if you are attending!

• A spooky video of Antarctica briefly made a UC San Diego scientist a TikTok star. Can he come up with another hit? (9/16/23): Featuring Austin Carter

• Congratulations to Dr. Eric Steig (University of Washington), who has been named a 2023 American Geophysical Union Fellow! He has been awarded this honor “for numerous fundamental contributions in ice core, paleoclimate, and climate dynamics research.”

• Unpacking Ice (8/29/23): new COLDEX blog post by postdoc Asmita Banerjee

• Anticipating Antarctica (8/17/23): blog post by COLDEX PhD student Julia Marks Peterson

• Congratulations to PhD student Shravan Kaundinya for winning 2nd place in the “Three Minute Thesis” competition at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in Pasadena, California! Shravan shared about his work in COLDEX in just three minutes with his talk ““COLDEX Radar: The hunt for old ice.” You can watch his talk here.

• The Search for Earth’s Oldest Ice (5/31/23) - A virtual conversation on how this search for the oldest ice can help scientists anticipate changes we may face as the Earth continues to warm. 2022 Climate Science Reporting Fellow Christian Elliott will speak with scientists Peter Neff and Sarah Shackleton, followed by time for Q&A with the audience. Recording will be available soon.

• Scientists drill for oldest ice to reveal secrets about Earth’s climate (4/1/23) - and see the cover photo.

• Why East Antarctica is a ‘sleeping giant’ of sea level rise (3/12/23) - with quotes and photos from Shuai Yan and Peter Neff

• Can TikTok Save Antarctica? No, but “@Icy_Pete” shows what it CAN do (3/1/23)

• Congratulations to two outstanding COLDEXers whose accomplishments have recently been recognized with well-deserved awards!

  • Dr. Sarah Aarons (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) is the 2023 recipient of the F.W. Clarke Award from the Geochemical Society, which honors a single outstanding contribution to geochemistry or cosmochemistry by an early-career scientist.

  • Dr. Christo Buizert (Oregon State University) has been named a 2023 Sloan Research Fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The winners of the 2023 Sloan Research Fellowships “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today.”

• Inside the Race to Find Earth’s Oldest Ice (2/9/23) - Third in a three-part series, “COLDEX: The Search for Earth’s Oldest Ice,” by Pulitzer Center Fellow Christian Elliott.

• As Antarctic Fieldwork Ends, a Sexual Harassment Reckoning Looms (2/6/23) - Second in a three-part series, “COLDEX: The Search for Earth’s Oldest Ice,” by Pulitzer Center Fellow Christian Elliott.

• Finding the cold on a warming planet (1/19/23) - First in a three-part series, “COLDEX: The Search for Earth’s Oldest Ice,” by Pulitzer Center Fellow Christian Elliott.

• OSU student joins team in Antarctica searching for world's oldest piece of ice (1/19/23) - featuring Julia Marks Peterson

• Probing Antarctica by Land, Sea, Air, and from Earth Orbit (1/17/23) - featuring Austin Carter and Jamin Greenbaum

• Camera plunges down Antarctica borehole to reveal Earth's 'oldest ice' (12/29/22)

• Hunt begins for Antarctica's oldest ice (12/19/22)

• What Polar Ice Tells Us About Climate Change with Peter Neff - Radio interview, KMSU Every Day is Earth Day (12/15/22)

• Researchers studying oldest ice on Earth become first Antarctic field camp to use Starlink internet (12/7/22)

• University of Minnesota researcher joins team to study oldest ice on the planet in Antarctica (12/5/22) - featuring Peter Neff, live from Antarctica

• ‘Climate heartbeat’: Scientists hunt for world’s oldest ice (11/23/22)

• Oregon State University-led effort to find Earth’s oldest ice begins this month in Antarctica (11/20/22)

• 2 Oak Park-River Forest H.S. Seniors are ‘first ever’ in grade level to be mentored by COLDEX: District officials (11/10/22) - featuring Kristen Rahilly and Skyler Jacob

• Now available for pre-order: The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone, by COLDEX Director for Knowledge Transfer Heidi Roop

  This must-have book shows us WHY we need to take action now to combat climate change and then, critically, HOW, through easy-to-understand language and stunning infographics that offer each of us varied and doable solutions to the overwhelming challenges facing our planet.

  As more focus is put on climate science, there is a need for each of us to learn how we can change our habits in our home, communities, and government to help mitigate the existential threat of climate change. The Climate Action Handbook is the response to this need, and the book every household needs.

  This visually stunning guide does what no other climate change book manages to do: it’s approachable, digestible, and offers the average human ideas, options, and a roadmap for action. It also offers hope. Climate scientist Dr. Heidi Roop lays out the issues facing the planet and offers up 100 important actions that readers can take right now in their daily lives to help slow the adverse effects of climate change. Compelling infographics provide visual impact and context to the topic at hand.

• Behind the research: What the oldest Antarctic ice can tell us about climate change (11/7/22) - featuring Peter Neff

• The Story of Ice Webinar: Join NSF-funded researchers from the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX) live from Antarctica as they embark on a journey to answer critical questions to understand past and future climate change. Researchers have traveled to Antarctica to find, drill, and process the oldest ice on the continent, culminating in the collection of a continuous ice core record that extends at least 1.5 million years ago. This event is aimed at students of all ages interested in learning about Antarctica, Antarctic science, ice cores, and climate change. Nov 15, 2022, 1:00 PM Eastern/10:00 am Pacific.

• Lots of COLDEXers presenting at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting! Check out the list here.

• COLDEX Statement about the NSF OPP/USAP Report on Sexual Assault/Harassment and Response

• The first COLDEX field teams will deploy to Antarctica in November 2022.

• Check out the list of COLDEXers giving presentations at the 3rd International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences Open Science Conference, October 2-7!

• COLDEX ran a pilot Research Experiences for Undergraduates program during summer 2022. The full program will launch in summer 2023. Learn about our 2022 REU participants here.

• The first annual COLDEX meeting will take place at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR on September 15-16, 2022. See the full meeting agenda here.

• University of Minnesota scientist brings Antarctic work home via TikTok (7/2/22) - featuring Peter Neff and John Goodge (pdf)

• ESE Symposium to consider social media influence in environmental efforts (4/1/22) - featuring Peter Neff

• Ice shelf collapse: ‘Unknown’ Antarctica still holds surprises (4/1/22) - featuring Peter Neff

• A heat wave and snowfall: Why researchers are puzzled by Antarctica's recent weather (3/27/22) - featuring Peter Neff

• As good as a time machine (2/8/22) - featuring Nick Holschuh

• School of Ice Program for MSI Faculty - Summer 2022

  • COLDEX-Oregon State University, OR, August 6-12, applications due April 14, 2022

• Hunt begins for ancient Antarctic ice—and clues to Earth’s response to rising temperatures, in Science (10/20/2021)

• Congratulations to COLDEX Participant Sarah Aarons, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, for the Geological Society of American Doris M. Curtis Outstanding Women in Science Award

• UW part of $25M NSF-funded effort to retrieve Earth’s oldest ice core (9/14/2021)

• Oregon State to lead National Science Foundation-funded Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (9/9/2021)

• New science and technology centers to address vexing societal problems (9/9/2021)