Scientists in Antarctica have launched the world’s first global repository for mountain ice cores. The Ice Memory Foundation opened the frozen vault at the Concordia research station on the Antarctic Plateau on Wednesday. This special cave, carved into compacted snow, will store ice cores that are key to understanding Earth’s climate history. The foundation livestreamed the event, which marked a major step to protect these natural time capsules. Ice cores trap gases, dust, and pollutants from hundreds of years ago. They reveal vital information about how the atmosphere and climate have changed. But glaciers around the world are melting at an unprecedented rate. If scientists don’t preserve these cores now, we could lose them forever. Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the UN World Meteorological Organization, told AP, "These ice cores are not relics, they are reference points. They allow scientists now and in the future to understand what changed, how fast and why." The first ice cores stored at the vault came from Mont Blanc in France and the Grand Combin massif in Switzerland. It took 50 days for the frozen samples to reach Concordia via icebreaker and aircraft from Italy. Foundation members carried box after box of these precious cores into a cave kept at a chilly minus 52 degrees Celsius. Carlo Barbante, vice-chair of the Ice Memory Foundation, said, "By safeguarding physical samples of atmospheric gases, aerosols, pollutants and dust trapped in ice layers, the Ice Memory Foundation ensures that future generations of researchers will be able to study past climate conditions using technologies that may not yet exist." Started in 2015 by research groups from France, Italy, and Switzerland, the Ice Memory project has collected ice cores from 10 glacier sites worldwide. These will be shipped to the Antarctic vault over the coming years. The goal is to create an international treaty to protect these samples for decades to come. According to the foundation, glaciers have lost between 2% and 39% of their ice in various regions since 2000, with an average global loss of about 5%. This rapid melting endangers these critical archives of Earth’s atmospheric past.