An ice sample on the melter during continuous ice core chemical analyses in the lab.
Sylvain Masclin.
It never rains but it pours for creationism. Or in this case, not pouring rain but a veritable ice storm — an ice core from the oldest Alpine glacier, holding a remarkably detailed record of the past 12,000 years, stretching back to the end of the last Ice Age.
The core, 40 metres long, was extracted from Mont Blanc’s Dôme du Goûter glacier in the French Alps.
And — surprise, surprise! — there is no sign of a cataclysmic global flood. Not even the faintest trace. In this part of the French Alps at least, the worldwide genocidal flood that creationists believe their deity unleashed upon the Earth quite simply never happened. Strangely, a flood supposedly deep enough to cover all mountains (Genesis 7:19–20) failed to reach the peaks of the European Alps.
Instead, what the ice core reveals is a continuous, uninterrupted history stretching back to at least 2,000 years before ‘Creation Week’, capturing seasonal changes, shifts in climate, volcanic eruptions, and even Saharan dust storms—each leaving a tell-tale signature now entombed in successive layers of ice.
Even more awkward for creationists is the fact that this ice-core record aligns precisely with well-documented events elsewhere, allowing scientists to calibrate and extrapolate timelines deep into European prehistory with high accuracy.
What are some of the major changes that we can expect to find recorded in this ice core, and what would we see if the Bible narrative were true? The 12,000-year ice core from the Dôme du Goûter glacier captures a continuous and finely layered environmental archive, allowing scientists to reconstruct past conditions year by year. Here are some of the major changes we can expect to find recorded in such a core—and what we'd expect if the young-Earth biblical narrative were accurate.In addition to their open-access paper published in PNAS Nexus, the team from the Desert Research Institute's (DRI’s) Ice Core Lab in Reno, Nevada, have explained their findings—and their wider significance—in a DRI news release.
What the Ice Core Actually Records
- Annual Layers
Each year leaves a distinct layer, much like tree rings. These layers show seasonal variations in temperature, snowfall, and dust content.- Volcanic Eruptions
Volcanic ash and sulphate deposits leave detectable chemical signatures. Major eruptions such as Santorini (~1600 BCE), Vesuvius (79 CE), and Tambora (1815 CE) appear in the ice core as abrupt sulphate spikes.- Saharan Dust Events
Periodic dust storms from the Sahara deposit fine red dust in Alpine ice, especially during dry periods in North Africa.- Industrial Pollution
Traces of heavy metals (e.g. lead) and carbon particulates spike after the Industrial Revolution, especially from the mid-19th century onwards.- Nuclear Fallout
Isotopes like tritium and caesium-137 from mid-20th-century atomic bomb testing provide sharp chronological markers.- Climate Shifts
The core shows gradual changes such as:
- The end of the last glacial period (~11,700 years ago)
- The Holocene Climate Optimum (~9,000–5,000 years ago)
- The Little Ice Age (~1300–1850 CE)
- 20th–21st century global warming
- Stable Isotope Ratios
Variations in oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios allow scientists to infer temperature changes over millennia.
What We’d Expect If the Bible’s Flood Narrative Were True
If the Genesis Flood occurred around 4,300 years ago (a common young-Earth creationist date), and was global, we would expect to see:
- A Massive Disruption in Ice Layers
The record would be erased or jumbled by the unimaginable rainfall and glacial melting that a year-long global deluge would cause.- A Thick, Anomalous Layer
Possibly a single thick, chaotic layer of mixed sediments, debris, and chemical anomalies corresponding to a cataclysmic year unlike any other.- Post-Flood Ice Growth Only
Since glaciers would be presumed to have formed after the Flood, the ice core could contain at most ~4,300 annual layers, not 12,000.- Lack of Historical Signals Before 2300 BCE
There would be no evidence of climatic or environmental continuity before this date—no volcanic eruptions, no seasonal cycles, no Saharan dust, no isotope trends.- Inconsistencies with Other Records
The core would fail to align with tree rings (dendrochronology), lake sediments, cave deposits, and archaeological timelines—all of which show continuous, undisturbed records extending well beyond 6,000 years.
The Verdict
The ice core confirms none of the predictions made by a literal reading of Genesis. Instead, it shows a stable, uninterrupted environmental history that perfectly fits the scientific understanding of the Holocene epoch—and flatly contradicts any global flood or recent creation.
Scientists Find the First Ice Core From the European Alps That Dates Back to the Last Ice AgeBefore moving on to the technical details in the PNAS Nexus paper, here is how a panick-stricken creationist responded to a Facebook post highlighting this compelling evidence that the Bible narrative is wrong and contains accounts of things that simply never happened. ChatGPT's rebutal of the YEC lies follows:
The ice core holds clues to 12,000 years of human and environmental history.
Glaciers hold layers of history preserved in ice, offering unique insights into Earth’s past that can also help us interpret the future. Trapped amidst the frozen water are microscopic deposits of dust, pollen, and even pollutants that scientists can use to examine environmental changes through time. DRI’s Ice Core Lab has used this technique to highlight atmospheric lead pollution and economic turbulence in Ancient Rome. Now, their latest study found that a glacier in the French Alps dates back the last Ice Age – the oldest known glacier ice in the region. Serving as a record that spans through the development of agriculture in Western Europe and the advent of industrialization, the glacier holds insights into an era of rapid change.
The new study, published in the June issue of PNAS Nexus, examines a 40-meter long ice core from Mont Blanc’s Dôme du Goûter. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, the research team found that the glacier provides an intact record of aerosols and climate dating back at least 12,000 years. Aerosols are small droplets and particles in the air such as desert dust, sea salts, sulfur from volcanic eruptions, soot from forest fires, as well as pollutants and other emissions from human activities. Glacier ice offers the most detailed record of past atmospheric aerosols, and this is the first ice core record from the European region that extends back to the last climatic transition. Aerosols play an important role in regional climate through their interactions with clouds and solar radiation, and the insights offered by the ice record can help inform accurate climate modeling for both the past and future.
For the first time, we have a fairly complete Alpine record of atmospheric and precipitation chemistry going all the way back to the Mesolithic Period. And that’s a big deal, because you have two major climate states – glacial and interglacial – and to get a record of atmospheric precipitation chemistry across that huge climate change tells you the most extreme natural aerosol concentrations that you’d expect. On top of that, you have humans going from hunter-gatherers with a very low population through the development of agriculture, domestication of animals, mining, etc, and then a vast population increase and the clearing of land. All of that is happening around this ice core site. It spans the full range of natural and anthropogenic change, and it’s right in the center of Europe – where much of Western civilization evolved.
Joseph R. McConnell, co-author.
Division of Hydrologic Sciences
Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, USA.
The glacier’s location in the Alps is important because it serves as a more intact record of Europe’s local climate than those found in distant Arctic ice. Many aerosols play important roles in driving Earth’s climate, so scientists would like to know how sources and concentrations in the air have varied in the past.Ice cores collected from glaciers and ice sheets can provide such information, but since these droplets and particles stay in the air only for a few days to maybe a week, records developed from glaciers close to the sources often are the most informative.
Michel Legrand, lead author.
Université Paris Cité and Univ Paris Est Creteil, CNRS, LISA
Paris, France.
The ice core analyzed in this study was first collected in 1999 by some of the study’s French authors. It was stored in a freezer in France for more than 20 years before McConnell and his team brought it to DRI’s Ice Core Lab in Reno, Nevada, where specialized equipment and methods known as continuous flow analysis allowed it to be melted down and the chemistry measured, layer by icy layer.
Determining what year or period of time a layer in the ice represents can be challenging, so here we used a unique combination of radiometric methods to establish the chronology in the ice.
Werner Aeschbach, co-author
Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP)
Heidelberg University
Heidelberg, Germany.
We were relieved to find that even under the unusually warm climate of the 20th century, the cold temperatures at over 14,000 feet near Mont Blanc’s peak had preserved the glacier so that the ice record hadn’t yet been impacted by melting.
Nathan J. Chellman, co-author.
Division of Hydrologic Sciences
Desert Research Institute
Reno, NV, USA.
The historic age of the ice at the base of the core, around 40 meters deep into the glacier, surprised the researchers. Another core collected from a glacier located less than 100 meters away at Col du Dome was found to contain ice only about a century old, despite being much deeper. The scientists attribute this to the strong wind patterns found on Mont Blanc.
Study coauthor Nathan Chellman carefully preparing longitudinal ice core samples for high-resolution measurements in DRI’s Ice Core LabJessi LeMay.
An ice sample on the melter during continuous ice core chemical analyses in the lab.Sylvain Masclin.
It’s exciting to find the first ice core from the European Alps containing an intact record of climate that extends back through the current ten-thousand-year warm period and into the very different climate of the last ice age.
Susanne Preunkert, co-author.
Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement (IGE)
Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS
Grenoble, France.
Insights into Europe’s Past Climate
The uniquely detailed ice record revealed a temperature difference of about 3 degrees Celsius between the last Ice Age and the current Holocene Epoch. Using pollen records embedded in the ice, reconstructions of summer temperatures during the last Ice Age were about 2 degrees Celsius cooler throughout western Europe, and about 3.5 degrees Celsius cooler in the Alps.
The phosphorous record also told researchers the story of vegetation changes in the region over the last 12,000 years. Phosphorous concentrations in the ice were low during the last Ice Age, increased dramatically during the early to mid-Holocene, and then decreased steadily into the late Holocene. This is consistent with the spread of forests under the warmer climate, and their decline following the proliferation of modern society and the land-clearing that resulted from agriculture and the spread of industry.
Records of sea salt also helped the researchers examine changes in historical wind patterns. The ice core revealed higher rates of sea salt deposition during the last Ice Age that may have resulted from stronger westerly winds offshore of western Europe. Sea salt aerosols can scatter solar radiation back to space and affect climate via their impacts on cloud droplet, size, and albedo, making them important drivers of the regional climate.
The ice record tells a more dramatic story for the changes in dust aerosols during the climatic shift. Dust serves as an important driver of climate by both absorbing and scattering incoming solar radiation and outgoing planetary radiation, and impacts cloud formation and precipitation by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. During the last Ice Age, dust was found to be about 8-fold higher compared to the Holocene. This contradicts the mere doubling of dust aerosols between warm and cold climate stages in Europe simulated by prior climate models. The difference may be explained by increased plumes of Saharan dust depositing in Europe, which remains the main source of dust in the region. The ice core record is consistent with other paleoclimate records that suggest more arid conditions over the Mediterranean during colder climates.
The 1999 expedition team collecting the ice core from Dome du Goûter on the shoulder of Mont Blanc.LGGE/OSUG, Bruno Jourdain.
Uncovering More Stories Entombed in the Ice
This study is only the beginning of the Mont Blanc ice record’s story, as the researchers plan to continue analyzing it for indicators of human history. The first step in uncovering every ice core’s record is to use isotopes and radiocarbon dating to establish how old each layer of ice is. Now, with that information, the scientists can take an even deeper look at what it can tell us about past human civilizations and their impact on the environment.
Now we can start to interpret all these other records that we have of lead and arsenic and other things like that, in terms of human history. If you’re really going to go back and examine all possible climate states, past and future, you need a model that captures true climate variability. It’s a laudable goal, but to evaluate how good the models are, you’ve got to be able to compare them to observations, right? And that’s where the ice cores come in.”
Joseph R.McConnell.
The information can also be used to help interpret how changes in aerosols impact the climate and improve modeling to help us understand current and future climatic shifts.
Publication:Study authors include: Michel Legrand, Joe McConnell, Susanne Preunkert, David Wachs, Nathan Chellman, Kira Rehfeld, Gilles Bergametti, Sophia Wensman, Werner Aeschbach, Markus Oberthaler, and Ronny Friedrich
The YEC's response to this ice core evidence.
This is far from a devastating blow to creationists. The fact that an ice core from the Alps is interpreted to be 12,000 years old doesn’t prove anything against the biblical Flood .. it just shows how much these conclusions depend on assumptions.
If you're really interested in Flood evidence, look at the rocks, fossils, and sediment layers .. not just a piece of ice and an interpretation based on modern assumptions.
- Ice core dating assumes that layers formed consistently, year after year, without major catastrophic events that could disrupt, compress, or mix them. But that’s exactly what a global Flood would do .. it would drastically disturb the environment and change how layers form. So you can’t use a method that assumes slow, steady processes to disprove a massive, chaotic event.
- Layers do not automatically equal years. Several layers can form in one year under extreme weather conditions. Assuming one layer per year and then saying “we found 12,000 years” is circular reasoning.
- Many creationists believe glaciers formed after the Flood, during a post-Flood Ice Age caused by the rapid climate changes that followed. So if the ice has thousands of layers, they could simply reflect the years after the Flood, not before it.
- Not finding evidence of a Flood in one alpine glacier doesn’t mean the Flood didn’t happen. The evidence is elsewhere .. in the fossil layers that stretch across continents, in marine fossils on mountaintops, in massive sediment formations that were clearly laid down quickly and violently.
- And let’s be honest: these interpretations always start with the assumption that the Bible is wrong. So naturally, the conclusions will match that assumption. But an assumption isn’t evidence.
Here is a YEC response to this ice core evidence* Comments? This response is a typical example of the creationist tactic of discrediting the methodology rather than offering a viable alternative explanation backed by data. Let's address each point in turn:Now the technical details:
Summary
- Ice core dating assumes uniform conditions; a Flood would disrupt that
Response:
This misunderstands how glaciologists interpret ice cores. Scientists do account for disturbances, compression, and flow—especially in the lower sections of cores. That’s why multiple methods are used to cross-check ages:
- Annual layer counting (in upper parts)
- Isotope ratios
- Volcanic ash layers linked to known eruptions
- Radiometric dating of trapped particles
- Correlation with other dated cores and tree rings
If there had been a global catastrophic event 4,300 years ago, it would not be subtle. It would leave a distinct, chaotic signal in multiple cores across the planet. We don’t see that. Instead, we see continuity, not disruption.
- Layers ≠ years; several layers could form in one year
Response:
It’s true that multiple sub-layers (e.g. summer/winter) can exist within one year, especially near the surface, but glaciologists distinguish these using physical and chemical markers, such as seasonal dust, isotopes, and chemical changes. The number of layers is not assumed but carefully identified—often using microscopy and spectroscopy.
Also, if multiple layers per year were responsible, then this should lead to inconsistencies when cross-matched with other dating techniques—but it doesn’t. Ice cores match well with tree rings, varves (lake sediments), and speleothems (cave formations), all showing thousands of years of continuous record.
- Glaciers formed after the Flood; layers reflect post-Flood years
Response:
This assertion creates more problems than it solves:
- If 12,000 layers formed in just 4,300 years, that requires nearly 3 distinct layers per year, consistently, worldwide.
- But layer formation is tied to seasonality, not arbitrary frequency.
- It also means we should see a clear transition zone at the bottom—where the ice starts abruptly. Yet the core shows a gradual transition from glacial to post-glacial conditions, matching other Holocene records globally.
Additionally, we have ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica going back over 100,000 years, not just 12,000.
- The Flood evidence is in fossils and rocks, not in ice
Response:
This is a bait-and-switch. The claim here is that ice cores can't disprove the Flood — but that misses the point. The absence of Flood signals in the ice contradicts the central claim of a global flood around 2300 BCE.
Furthermore, the supposed “Flood evidence” in the fossil record is:
- Better explained by gradual sedimentation, ecological succession, and plate tectonics
- Consistently ordered, with no global mixing of modern and ancient species
- Regionally and globally variable, not the uniform "Flood layer" creationists suggest
Marine fossils on mountains are due to plate tectonics, not floods.
- Scientists assume the Bible is wrong; it’s all worldview Response:
This is an ad hominem and a misunderstanding of science. Scientists don’t assume the Bible is wrong — they follow evidence wherever it leads. If a global flood had occurred, multiple independent datasets (ice cores, tree rings, sediments, DNA, archaeology) would show it. They don’t. Saying "it’s just interpretation based on assumptions" dismisses:
- Empirical measurements
- Cross-disciplinary consistency
- Predictive power of models
Science isn't about starting assumptions. It’s about testable, repeatable evidence. The biblical account, by contrast, offers no predictive framework, no falsifiability, and requires special pleading to explain why no geological or climatological evidence matches its claims.
The creationist response:
- Ignores how ice core science actually works
- Relies on vague speculation, not data
- Offers no positive model of its own
- Invokes worldview bias rather than engaging with the evidence
The ice core from the Alps—and many others—tells a consistent story: no global flood, no recent creation, but a world shaped by natural processes over deep time.
For young-Earth creationism, this Alpine ice core is more than a minor inconvenience — it’s a direct contradiction of their timeline and theology. If a global flood had wiped out all life just over 4,000 years ago, followed by the rapid reformation of glaciers, we would expect to see some clear evidence of that in the physical record. But the core from Mont Blanc shows no such break. No dramatic disturbance, no abrupt climatic chaos, no single thick sediment layer representing a world-shattering deluge. Just a clear, continuous, and annual record of normal seasonal cycles stretching back 12,000 years — well before the supposed year of creation, and even longer before the mythical Flood.Abstract
Aerosol radiative forcing is an important but often poorly understood component of regional climate. While glacier ice contains the most detailed archives of past atmospheric aerosol composition and temperature, no well-preserved ice records extending into the last climatic transition have been reported for the historically important European region. Here, we use an Alpine ice core to document changes in European aerosols and climate from the end of the last glacial age (LGA) through the Holocene. The core was drilled on a glacier dome in the French Alps called the Dôme du Goûter (DDG), and it provides a stratigraphically intact record of aerosol and climate extending to at least 12 kyears (ky) before present. Although dating near the base of the glacier is not well constrained, the oldest DDG ice layers reflect glacial conditions in western Europe during the LGA. In addition to changes in atmospheric transport, increased sea-salt and dust deposition in western Europe recorded in the LGA ice suggest enhanced westerly winds and more active dust sources, possibly including North Africa. Deposition of terrestrial biogenic indicators during the cold LGA climate was lower, however, consistent with strongly reduced European vegetation. The DDG record of terrestrial biogenic emissions also suggests a decline of European forests throughout the Holocene, resulting from deterioration of climatic conditions and more recently from establishment of the first agricultural societies. The pronounced changes in atmospheric aerosol recorded in Alpine ice imply large variations in aerosol radiative forcing in western Europe during the last 12 ky.
Significance Statement
Aerosol radiative forcing is an important driver of regional climate, so understanding changes in atmospheric aerosol is critical for accurate climate modeling. Although glacier ice contains the most detailed records of past atmospheric aerosol, no ice core records extending to the end of the last climatic transition ∼11,700 years ago have been reported for the historically important European region. Here, we report an ice core record collected from the French Alps that spans the last great climatic transition. This record shows increased sea-salt and dust concentrations over western Europe during cold climates consistent with enhanced westerly winds and larger dust emissions possibly from the Sahara, but lower concentrations of biogenic particles during cold climates implying markedly reduced European vegetation cover.
Introduction
Atmospheric aerosols, as well as trace gases, play key roles in radiative transfer, carbon cycling, and climate. Glacier ice is unique in that it simultaneously archives information on past soluble and insoluble aerosol, trace gases, and temperature. As a result, polar ice core records have been used extensively to study past environmental conditions over multiple climate cycles (100 kyears [ky]) at hemispheric and global scales (1–4). Greenland ice has revealed enhanced concentrations of sea-salt and crustal dust aerosol during cold climates compared with the Holocene at high northern latitudes that have been attributed to strengthened westerlies and enhanced dust emissions from Eastern Asia, respectively (2). Because of the short atmospheric lifetime of aerosols (days to weeks), ice core records proximal to emissions sources can provide information about radiative transfer and environmental conditions on regional scales, in addition to the hemispheric perspective from polar ice core records.
Numerous records of past climate have been derived from European sedimentary archives such as peat, loess, speleothems, and lake sediments (5). However, archives of past atmospheric aerosol extending back to the last climatic transition are available only for a few trace elements (6), largely restricted to water-insoluble aerosol species. Understanding environmental changes and drivers of European climate, such as variations in sea salt and both natural and anthropogenic dust and vegetation emissions, is of particular interest given the magnitude of population growth and extensive land-use change during the rise of Western Civilization under the relatively stable climate of the Holocene following the last glacial/interglacial transition.
Although cores extracted from high-elevation glaciers offer the possibility of documenting past environments in nonpolar regions, most records are restricted to present climate conditions. Except for two ice cores extracted from the Andes (7) and the Tibetan Plateau (8), no glacial records with intact climate–aerosol information other than from high-latitude sites such as those on the polar sheets extend back to the last glacial–interglacial transition (11.65–19.0 ky before present [BP]). While radiocarbon analyses of particulate organic carbon (PO14C) have indicated that Pleistocene ice is sometimes present in the bottom layers of West European glaciers (9), it was shown that the climate information has been strongly modified after snow deposition. For example, the δ18O temperature record from a Colle Gnifetti (CG, Swiss-Italian Alps) core indicated a depletion of 4‰ near the bottom of the core. Although similar to the δ18O drop observed in Greenland ice during the last climate transition, this change occurred in CG ice dated by 14C measurements to 3 ky BP (9). It was proposed that this large discrepancy resulted from postdepositional liquid migration of 18O at the grain boundary of ice located in zones of strong strain-rate gradients above the inclined bedrock (10).
Here, we report on an Alpine ice core drilled at the flat summit of Dôme du Goûter (DDG) (4,304 m above sea level [asl]) (Fig. S1) located just above the Col du Dome (CDD) ice coring sites (11). In contrast to other Alpine ice cores typically collected from topographic saddles, the DDG bottom ice is less affected by strong strain-rate gradients. We show that δ18O in the ice decreased in bottom layers covering the late glacial period as indicated by layer thinning-based extrapolation of 14C dating of early Holocene ice, strongly suggesting that the stratigraphically intact climate record extends to ∼12 ky BP. Based on this assumption and using analyses of various aerosol proxies including sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), chloride (Cl), aluminum (Al), iron (Fe), phosphorus (P), cerium (Ce), and insoluble particles, we document and discuss changes of sea-salt, dust, and biogenic aerosols emitted by vegetation in response to past climatic conditions in Europe. Free of postdepositional alterations, this Alpine ice record provides an important new climate archive that fills the gap of paleoatmospheric data in this region. These new aerosol and water isotope records are compared to similar extracted from Greenland ice cores representing high northern latitude regions.
Michel Legrand, Joseph R McConnell, Susanne Preunkert, David Wachs, Nathan J Chellman, Kira Rehfeld, Gilles Bergametti, Sophia M Wensman, Werner Aeschbach, Markus K Oberthaler, Ronny Friedrich.
Alpine ice core record of large changes in dust, sea-salt, and biogenic aerosol over Europe during deglaciation.
PNAS Nexus, 4(6), June 2025, pgaf186, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf186
Copyright: © 2025 The authors, National Academy of Sciences.
Published by Oxford University Press. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
This isn’t an isolated case either. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica go back tens of thousands — even hundreds of thousands — of years, all showing the same thing: steady accumulation, annual layering, and no trace of a global catastrophe. The problem for creationists isn’t just that these findings contradict their beliefs; it’s that these results are *consistently reproducible*, independently verified, and supported by multiple lines of evidence — including tree rings, sediment cores, and archaeological data.
The fallback response — that scientists are simply assuming long ages and uniform processes — rings hollow. Ice cores aren’t interpreted in a vacuum. Their dates are cross-checked against known volcanic eruptions, climate events, and geochemical signals. They align precisely with other well-established timelines. Dismissing this as ‘just assumptions’ is a cop-out — the scientific equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “La la la!”
In the end, the data speak for themselves. And the silent testimony of this frozen Alpine archive is crystal clear: the Earth is old, history is deep, and the story creationists keep telling simply doesn’t match reality.
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