Ice cores have revolutionized our understanding of Earth’s climatic and environmental evolution through detailed and well-dated records of polar climate and atmospheric composition and aerosols. The ice cores and boreholes further provide a valuable glaciological laboratory for studying ice dynamics, microstructure, and subglacial processes. The International Partnership in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) is an expert group of scientists and engineers from over 20 nations that aims to coordinate international collaboration in ice core sciences.

The North American ice core community is proud to host the Fourth IPICS Open Science Conference in Banff, Canada, in October 2026. This meeting brings together experts in environmental reconstruction, ice dynamics, climate and ice sheet modeling, and ice drilling. Networking and professional development activities are organized for and by early career researchers. Many nations have taken up the IPICS “Oldest Ice Challenge” to extend the ice core record further back in time beyond the 800,000 year limit of traditional continuous ice cores. The 2026 IPICS conference will feature new results from continuous cores extending back as far as perhaps 1.5 million years, and discontinuous cores going back as far as six million years.

This IPICS 2026 special issue between Climate of the Past and The Cryosphere invites contributions from all aspects of ice core related sciences.

The glacial–interglacial cyclicity of the climate system varied in the past, most notably during the transition from a 40 ka to a 100 ka world in the mid-Pleistocene. Gases trapped in Antarctic ice are the most direct access available to investigate the composition of the paleo-atmosphere of that age and processes related to climate variability. The International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) Oldest Ice endeavour aims at obtaining an undisturbed ice-core record older than 1 Ma. In addition to ice cores, time slices of paleo-records, available, for example, in Antarctic blue-ice fields, provide further valuable information, which complements continuous time series based on ice cores. This special issue will assemble contributions dedicated to the preparatory phase of this global effort to obtain ice samples and time series older than 700 000 years. This includes a consideration of glaciogical and geophysical settings which allow the presence of old ice, results from pre-site surveys and modelling studies, aspects of ice-core and other sampling techniques and analyses, and requirements for drilling and core handling.

SCAR INSTANT is a research programme of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) that focuses on understanding Antarctic ice sheet instabilities and their contribution to sea level changes, from the deep past to the future. The aim of INSTANT is to bridge communities, e.g. to try to bridge paleo-evidence and process-based development (for example, marine ice sheet instability (MISI), marine ice cliff instability (MICI), grounding line dynamics, ice–ocean interactions). The aim of the special issue is to reflect this process: what do we know from paleo-observations and present observations that can help to improve the physics; where are big modelling and observational gaps in ice sheet, ocean, and atmosphere physics; and what are the advances in paleo-proxies, present observations, methodologies, etc.? The various contributions should be community-driven and not single-author contributions. The papers should focus on the Antarctic system, thus focusing on atmosphere, the ocean, ice sheets, and bedrock and beneath and on the interactions between those components, from paleo-perspectives to the future. Global connections with Antarctica (teleconnections, inter-hemispheric processes) are also welcome. An important part of the SCAR INSTANT programme is the science-to-policy topic. As such, this special issue also welcomes policy-driven, actionable scientific contributions as well as social science studies.

Several terrain-induced processes in the atmospheric boundary layer over mountains affect the transport and exchange of heat, momentum, moisture, aerosols, and trace constituents between the surface and the atmosphere and within the atmosphere.

TEAMx (Multi-scale transport and exchange processes in the atmosphere over mountains – programme and experiment) is an international research program that aims at improving our understanding of these processes and their representation in numerical weather and climate prediction models. Measurements were collected in a north–south transect through the Alps using a range of different instruments as part of the 1-year-long TEAMx Observational Campaign between September 2024 and September 2025. To sample the mountain boundary layer at multiple spatial and temporal scales, observations from various platforms were combined: surface weather and eddy-covariance stations, surface-based remote sensing instruments, radiosoundings, drone-based measurements, and aircraft flights. The observational data were complemented by numerical modeling for process understanding and model development.

This special issue collects observational, modeling, and theoretical studies originating from the TEAMx research programme. In particular, we call for contributions that use data collected during the TEAMx Observational Campaign (TOC), use data collected during other TEAMx-related measurement campaigns (e.g., pre-campaign PC22, HEFEX), and result from funded projects endorsed by TEAMx. Idealized modeling studies and theoretical work dealing with meteorological processes in the mountain boundary layer and their parameterization are also welcome.

Two closely coordinated groups (one from the USA and the other from Europe) are revisiting the Camp Century sub-ice sediment and the silty ice zone just above it using a wide variety of analytical techniques to make inferences about ice sheet behaviour, palaeo-climate, and palaeo-ecology as well as sediment transport and sourcing. The paper that kicked this off was in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 2 years ago: "A multi-million-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century" (Christ et al., 2021).

Talking among the 20+ lead investigators, we decided that the papers coming out of multiple, coordinated investigations of this historic (and still unique) ice core would be very useful to the broader community if they could be gathered into a special issue. Having these papers together would increase their impact and accessibility. Because of the wide variety of investigations being conducted on the core materials, a combined special issue including papers from both The Cryosphere and Climate of the Past will generate the most contributions and the largest readership.

Reference:

Christ, A. J., Bieman, P. R., Schaefer, J. M., Dahl-Jensen, D., Steffensen, J. P, Corbett, L. B., Peteet, D. M., Thomas, E. K., Steig, E. J., Rittenour, T. M., Tison, J.-L., Blard, P.-H., Perdrial, N., Dethier, D. P., Lini, A., Hidy, A. J., Caffee, M. W., and Southon, J.: A multi-million-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 118, e2021442118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021442118, 2021.

Several terrain-induced processes in the atmospheric boundary layer over mountains affect the transport and exchange of heat, momentum, moisture, aerosols, and trace constituents between the surface and the atmosphere and within the atmosphere.

TEAMx (Multi-scale transport and exchange processes in the atmosphere over mountains – programme and experiment) is an international research program that aims at improving our understanding of these processes and their representation in numerical weather and climate prediction models. Measurements were collected in a north–south transect through the Alps using a range of different instruments as part of the 1-year-long TEAMx Observational Campaign between September 2024 and September 2025. To sample the mountain boundary layer at multiple spatial and temporal scales, observations from various platforms were combined: surface weather and eddy-covariance stations, surface-based remote sensing instruments, radiosoundings, drone-based measurements, and aircraft flights. The observational data were complemented by numerical modeling for process understanding and model development.

This special issue collects observational, modeling, and theoretical studies originating from the TEAMx research programme. In particular, we call for contributions that use data collected during the TEAMx Observational Campaign (TOC), use data collected during other TEAMx-related measurement campaigns (e.g., pre-campaign PC22, HEFEX), and result from funded projects endorsed by TEAMx. Idealized modeling studies and theoretical work dealing with meteorological processes in the mountain boundary layer and their parameterization are also welcome.

Ice cores have revolutionized our understanding of Earth’s climatic and environmental evolution through detailed and well-dated records of polar climate and atmospheric composition and aerosols. The ice cores and boreholes further provide a valuable glaciological laboratory for studying ice dynamics, microstructure, and subglacial processes. The International Partnership in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) is an expert group of scientists and engineers from over 20 nations that aims to coordinate international collaboration in ice core sciences.

The North American ice core community is proud to host the Fourth IPICS Open Science Conference in Banff, Canada, in October 2026. This meeting brings together experts in environmental reconstruction, ice dynamics, climate and ice sheet modeling, and ice drilling. Networking and professional development activities are organized for and by early career researchers. Many nations have taken up the IPICS “Oldest Ice Challenge” to extend the ice core record further back in time beyond the 800,000 year limit of traditional continuous ice cores. The 2026 IPICS conference will feature new results from continuous cores extending back as far as perhaps 1.5 million years, and discontinuous cores going back as far as six million years.

This IPICS 2026 special issue between Climate of the Past and The Cryosphere invites contributions from all aspects of ice core related sciences.

SCAR INSTANT is a research programme of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) that focuses on understanding Antarctic ice sheet instabilities and their contribution to sea level changes, from the deep past to the future. The aim of INSTANT is to bridge communities, e.g. to try to bridge paleo-evidence and process-based development (for example, marine ice sheet instability (MISI), marine ice cliff instability (MICI), grounding line dynamics, ice–ocean interactions). The aim of the special issue is to reflect this process: what do we know from paleo-observations and present observations that can help to improve the physics; where are big modelling and observational gaps in ice sheet, ocean, and atmosphere physics; and what are the advances in paleo-proxies, present observations, methodologies, etc.? The various contributions should be community-driven and not single-author contributions. The papers should focus on the Antarctic system, thus focusing on atmosphere, the ocean, ice sheets, and bedrock and beneath and on the interactions between those components, from paleo-perspectives to the future. Global connections with Antarctica (teleconnections, inter-hemispheric processes) are also welcome. An important part of the SCAR INSTANT programme is the science-to-policy topic. As such, this special issue also welcomes policy-driven, actionable scientific contributions as well as social science studies.

Two closely coordinated groups (one from the USA and the other from Europe) are revisiting the Camp Century sub-ice sediment and the silty ice zone just above it using a wide variety of analytical techniques to make inferences about ice sheet behaviour, palaeo-climate, and palaeo-ecology as well as sediment transport and sourcing. The paper that kicked this off was in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 2 years ago: "A multi-million-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century" (Christ et al., 2021).

Talking among the 20+ lead investigators, we decided that the papers coming out of multiple, coordinated investigations of this historic (and still unique) ice core would be very useful to the broader community if they could be gathered into a special issue. Having these papers together would increase their impact and accessibility. Because of the wide variety of investigations being conducted on the core materials, a combined special issue including papers from both The Cryosphere and Climate of the Past will generate the most contributions and the largest readership.

Reference:

Christ, A. J., Bieman, P. R., Schaefer, J. M., Dahl-Jensen, D., Steffensen, J. P, Corbett, L. B., Peteet, D. M., Thomas, E. K., Steig, E. J., Rittenour, T. M., Tison, J.-L., Blard, P.-H., Perdrial, N., Dethier, D. P., Lini, A., Hidy, A. J., Caffee, M. W., and Southon, J.: A multi-million-year-old record of Greenland vegetation and glacial history preserved in sediment beneath 1.4 km of ice at Camp Century, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 118, e2021442118, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021442118, 2021.

The glacial–interglacial cyclicity of the climate system varied in the past, most notably during the transition from a 40 ka to a 100 ka world in the mid-Pleistocene. Gases trapped in Antarctic ice are the most direct access available to investigate the composition of the paleo-atmosphere of that age and processes related to climate variability. The International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) Oldest Ice endeavour aims at obtaining an undisturbed ice-core record older than 1 Ma. In addition to ice cores, time slices of paleo-records, available, for example, in Antarctic blue-ice fields, provide further valuable information, which complements continuous time series based on ice cores. This special issue will assemble contributions dedicated to the preparatory phase of this global effort to obtain ice samples and time series older than 700 000 years. This includes a consideration of glaciogical and geophysical settings which allow the presence of old ice, results from pre-site surveys and modelling studies, aspects of ice-core and other sampling techniques and analyses, and requirements for drilling and core handling.