NEWS 12 May 2026 Data from Antarctica could help to solve the mystery of why ice ages were so brutal. Antarctic ice cores preserve tiny bubbles of ancient air, offering a record of Earth’s past atmosphere. Credit: British Antarctic Survey/Science Photo Library A Europe-wide collaboration has unveiled the longest continuous record of Earth’s climate and atmospheric conditions, stretching back 1.2 million years. The data were extracted from a 2.8-kilometre-deep ice core drilled in Antarctica, and show how the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tracked changes in global temperatures across multiple cycles of climate change. Researchers still have a great deal of information to extract from the ice, but “what they’ve got so far is pretty amazing”, says Edward Brook, a palaeoclimatologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “We can now look at each cycle, see how they are different in CO 2 concentration.…