Calderone glacieret, a unique archive for a possible paleoclimatic reconstruction of the Apennine region

The ongoing global warming has relevant effects on the worldwide cryosphere. During the last decades, the more negative consequences have been on the most delicate snow and ice environments. Calderone ice body, classified as glaciaret split in two separated portions since the summer of 2000, is one of the most significant examples of the transition from glacial to periglacial environment due to climate change. Calderone is the southernmost remained ice body in Europe and represents a unique archive for the paleoclimatic reconstruction of the Apennine region. Indeed, despite the high summer temperature that occurred in the last decades, the ice body is still conserved thanks to the presence of debris cover that protects the ice under layers from solar radiation. In the frame of Ice Memory project, last May one 27.2 m down to the bedrock ice core was extracted in order to identify the ice layeringand to achieve chemical and biological information that characterize the surrounding area. To better indagate the evolution of Calderone since 1999, a comparison among different Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and topographic surveys were carried out. Considering the rapid temperature increase of the last years, since 2015 annual photogrammetric surveys have been conducted in order to calculate the geodetic mass balance. In addition, before the drilling operation of last May, in March 2022 a high-resolution GPR survey associated with Electromagnetic (EM) and GPS measurements were achieved to better indagate the bedrock morphology, the glacier thickness, and the ice stratigraphy. Here we present the results of the 2022 geophysical surveys, the comparison with former measurements, and the first stratigraphic information from the ice core. The first preliminary results show that despite the rapid climate change of the last twenty years, since 2000 the thickness and the extension of the two portions of Calderone glaciaret have not undergone significant changes. This represents an amazing and unique example in the Apennine region of ice conservation under the massive temperature increase. For this reason, the Calderone ice core will be one of the best opportunity for paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the surrounding Mediterranean area.