Equipment being airlifted for renovation work on the Vallot observatory
Equipment being airlifted for renovation work on the Vallot observatory (4,360 m), in the Mont-Blanc massif in August 2016. This picture was taken during an ice coring operation at the col du Dôme pass (4,300 m). This operation was part of the Mémoire de la Glace (memory of ice) programme instated to save the glacial world heritage. An international team of glaciologists and engineers collected three ice cores, each 130 m long. One of these cores will be analysed in 2019 with the aim of constituting a database to be made available to the entire scientific community. The other two will be taken to the Concordia station in Antarctica in 2020. They will be stored at -54°C in a repository excavated beneath the snow. The purpose is to establish the world's first collection of glacial archives saved from glaciers threatened by global warming.