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.