Deepest Canadian ice core has reached bedrock

An ambitious Canadian flagship project has reached a major milestone, successfully drilling a 613-metre-deep ice core through the Müller Ice Cap to bedrock on Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut. This is now the deepest ice core ever extracted in Canada and promises to reveal vital insights into the Arctic’s climatic past.

Over several weeks, the drill team extracted the ice core in 2 to 3 metre sections in harsh climatic conditions. The operation concluded on May 16, 2025 when drillers began recovering sand and pebbles in the ice core sections—clear evidence that they had reached bedrock!

A woman in a blue parka handles the ice core

Project lead, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen studying a brown layer in the ice core.

“It has logistically been a challenging project, so I am so excited to successfully retrieve the ice core from Müller,” said project lead Dr. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Ice, Freshwater Marine Coupling, and Climate Change.

The Müller Ice Cap Project is a University of Manitoba led Canadian research initiative that brings together scientists from Canada, Denmark, and Australia. Its goal is to reconstruct detailed records of Arctic climate and sea ice conditions stretching back more than 10,000 years. The results could provide key insights into future changing conditions in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists stand on packed snow holding their respective flags up between them

International flag line, with each holding their respective flag.

Beyond revealing changes in Arctic climate over millennia, researchers also hope to determine whether the ice cap contains ice from the vast ice sheet covering North America during the last ice age.

The ice core segments have been transported to the Canadian Ice Core Laboratory in Edmonton, where scientific analysis will begin this fall.

Congratulations to the research team on this momentous achievement!