When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992, Jean-Robert Petit had every reason to feel anxious. He was living in the most remote place on Earth, in a research station run and supplied by . . . the Soviets. High up on the Antarctic plateau, atop 4 kilometres of ice, Vostok is no holiday camp. It holds the world record for the lowest reported temperature (-89.6 °C) and it takes two weeks to haul supplies there by land. But from these frozen depths has come an unprecedented record of climate change stretching back hundreds of thousands of years. The Soviets…
The ice man
29 January 2000
