Mariusz Potocki

As a field scientist working in the world’s highest and coldest regions, I focus on glaciers that preserve irreplaceable records of past climate and atmospheric chemistry. These frozen archives are melting rapidly, and in many places this could be the last opportunity to recover them. My work centers on extracting ice cores from polar and high-mountain environments that push the practical limits of scientific exploration. Drilling at extreme elevations and in remote regions requires technical adaptation, physical endurance, and close collaboration with local partners and mountain communities. By recovering ice cores from places such as Mount Everest, the Andes, Antarctica, and sub-Antarctic islands, I aim to bring physical evidence of climate change from regions once thought to be isolated from human influence.

High-mountain glaciers serve as critical water reserves for millions to billions of people downstream, and ice cores help us understand how these systems have responded to past climate variability and human activity. The chemistry preserved in these cores, including industrial pollutants, trace metals, and combustion byproducts, demonstrates that no part of the planet remains untouched, even at the highest elevations.

My hope for the future is to help preserve these disappearing climate records while advancing analytical methods that allow us to extract increasingly detailed information from them.  I hope my work contributes to a redefinition of exploration that is grounded not just in reaching summits or setting records, but in responsibility, focused on documenting change, sharing knowledge, and helping society understand the consequences of a rapidly warming world.

Early on in my life, I was drawn to environments where change is written directly into the terrain, including glaciers, ice caps, deserts, and remote mountains. These places offered a way to combine exploration with a deeper question: how does the Earth record environmental change, and what can those records tell us about the future?

During my training in physical geography, and later through specialization in geomorphology and glaciology, I came to understand that ice is one of the most robust natural archives we have. An ice core is not an abstract dataset. It is a tangible record of snowfall, atmospheric chemistry, dust, and pollution, preserved storm by storm, season by season and year by year over time. Recovering those records often requires working in places that are difficult to reach and logistically complex, but that challenge is an essential part of the science.

Over the years, living and conducting field exploration in polar regions and high-mountain environments has shaped how I approach both research and exploration. Long periods spent in Antarctica and remote mountain regions highlighted the importance of preparation, teamwork, and respect for local partners, for the landscape itself, and for the limits imposed by nature. For me, exploration is not about spectacle, but about persistence and responsibility.