Focus on the PEACE project / Ice cores in Quebec!

This mission, in collaboration with Laval University and the Centre d'Etudes Nordiques (CEN), aimed to better understand the chemical composition of these frozen soils and to compare the samples taken with older permafrost cores taken about ten years earlier in the same areas.

These older drillings were carried out as part of the ADAPT project in 2013, which Julien Fouché joined at the time. These older cores were taken from Quebec soil on the border with Alaska.

These valuable climate archives, collected in 2025 and 2013, were thawed at 4°C so that the team could collect and prepare around 100 solid and liquid samples for analysis in France.

Once back in France, the three researchers were able to study the isotopes of dissolved oxygen (O2) in the water from these ancient soils in order to go back in time and understand the ancient climates, the cycles of thawing and refreezing of the ice caps, and more broadly, the evolution of the climate in the Arctic over 10 years. These measurements can be used to create mathematical models to predict future climates. A second drilling mission is planned for the autumn to complete the sample collection.