Alpine Ice Core Unlocks 2,000 Years of European Climate and Human Activity
An international team drilled a 33-foot ice core on the Weißseespitze glacier, retrieving a 2,000-year climate record (128–1641 CE) that shows medieval metal mining (lead, copper, silver, arsenic), widespread forest fires, mineral dust, and distant volcanic eruptions. The record reveals natural vs. human signals, including a warm, dry period around 950–1040 CE that boosted fires. Dating combined carbon methods with argon-39, with surface ice from 2019 already 400 years old. Rapid Alpine warming is melting the glacier and could erase this climate memory within 10–20 years unless more cores are saved from threatened peaks.