Achieving core goals

Tian's trip to Purog Kangri Glacier is part of the project, Memory of Glaciers, a public welfare initiative in China that focuses on the rescue and preservation of ice cores, which aims to raise public awareness about the climate crisis and promote climate action.

"The purpose of this project is to combat climate change, salvage ice core archives and leave a complete record of ice cores for future generations," Tian says.

Memory of Glaciers is initiated by Polar Hub, a nonprofit organization in China that focuses on scientific exploration, citizen science and public education on the subject of climate change.

Wen Xu, co-founder of Polar Hub, recalls that, during an expedition on a glacier on Tangula Mountains, he encountered numerous ice lakes formed by glacial melting at an alarming rate due to climate change.

This experience led Wen to realize the urgency of addressing climate change and its impact on glaciers. As a result, he decided to take action, spreading awareness about climate change and encouraging collective efforts to confront the challenges it poses. In May 2017, Polar Hub was jointly initiated and established by Wen together with renowned domestic scientists and explorers.

According to Wen, the Memory of Glaciers project has a well-defined and long-term objective that its primary goal is to conduct rescue drilling of ice cores in mid-to-low latitudes, with a particular focus on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at elevations above 6,000 meters.

"The project aims to preserve glacier archives before they vanish, thus promoting climate change research and safeguarding valuable climatic heritage for the study of the Earth's history," he says.

Over the next decade, the project aims to salvage and preserve 100 representative deep ice cores from polar regions and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, contributing to the establishment within the Chinese scientific community of the most comprehensive ice core repository and an ice core museum for the mid-to-low latitude glaciers worldwide.

According to Wen, in addition to the Purog Kangri Glacier, this year's Memory of Glaciers project is also in the process of conducting sustainable ice core rescue activities on Mount Muztagh Ata in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Moreover, they are planning to launch a mini-program called "watch the glaciers", aiming to involve more people in glacier protection, both online and offline.