Alison Criscitiello: Drilling Canada’s deepest Ice Core

For the past month, ice-core scientist, high altitude mountaineer, and EC50 2025 honoree, Alison Criscitiello has been co-leading a groundbreaking expedition on the Müller Ice Cap, Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, aiming to drill Canada’s deepest Arctic ice core and uncover between 10-20 thousand years of climate history.

Working alongside Danish researchers and other international team members, her team is racing against warming temperatures to complete the expedition before summer melt stops access to the ice cap for the season. About a month into and 450m deep, it is now the deepest ice core ever drilled in Arctic Canada, and the expedition is only halfway over.

Alison is also leading efforts on the expedition to collect shallower cores to track modern pollutants, making this a pivotal study of both past climate and present-day contamination.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity for the Canadian Ice Core Lab, and Canada. At 450m and one month in, this is now the deepest ice core ever drilled in Canada. By the end of May we hope to hit bedrock at ~600m. This all-star international group, long after we drill this thing, will support the continued development of our ice core analytical capabilities here in Canada. Furthering our understanding of how the high Arctic has changed over the Holocene, and will continue to change in the future, feels as important to me as the collaborations made here on this remote ice cap.” – Alison Criscitiello

The drilling site was selected two years ago for its stable glacial ice depth. Encased within this ice are atmospheric deposits blown from the Atlantic Ocean — traces of bromine and iodine from ocean salts—that provide clues about Earth’s climatic past.

The team works long hours, drilling daily from 8 a.m. to midnight. The drill uses metal tubes that bore deep into the glacier to extract each segment of the ice core. These segments are then stored in a temporary on-site freezer, before they’ll be transported to Dr. Criscitiello’s Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL) in Edmonton, Alberta, for detailed analysis!

One month down of the expedition, and one more to go!