"In 1990 a meeting held in Grenoble, France brought many of the investigators involved in national ice coring efforts together to report on planned activities and discuss areas of potential international cooperation.
One of the major products of the Grenoble meeting was the interest generated in a plan to study the surface and near-surface record of several ice core parameters (eg., accumulation rate, stable isotopes, and snow chemistry) over the major topographic and climatic regions of Antarctica.
This plan was soon formulated into a program, called the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) which based on the scientific representation at that meeting included: Australia, Canada, China, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. Scientists from several other countries have since demonstrated an interest in the program. It was agreed that a knowledge of the distribution of Antarctica's major environmental parameters (eg., climate, atmospheric chemistry) as measured through ice cores would result in major contributions to the understanding of: global change; Antarctica's sensitive environment; and the interpretative capabilities required to compare existing and proposed ice coring programs."
