Researchers (from left) Carlo Barbante, Patrick Ginot, Jerome Chappellaz and Anne-Catherine Ohlmannpose with an ice core sample in Chamonix, eastern France, after extracting two of them - each over 120m long - from a Mont Blanc glacier. The two ice cores will eventually be stored in Antarctica as part of an operation to protect ice memory, now under threat from global warming. The four researchers are part of a team of French, Italian, Russian and American glaciologists and engineers whose aim is to create a global archive of glacial ice. The small bubbles of air in glaciers contain valuable information about past environmental and climatic conditions.