Abstract: Ice cores record past changes in precipitation, temperature, volcanic activity, and solar activity, and are therefore good proxies for studying global climate and environmental change. Polar ice cores play are unmatched in their capacity to extend the time scale of high-resolution paleoclimate records hundreds of thousands or even millions of years into the past. In recent years, a series of new research advances have been made in the study of polar ice cores, but there is still a lack of a systematic summary on this topic. In this paper, the latest research progress related to polar ice cores is reviewed. We mainly focus on polar ice cores’ physical properties, stable water isotopes, soluble and insoluble substances, and trapped gases. Finally, possible future directions of polar ice core research that could provide important new insights are discussed.

Key words: Antarctica, Arctic, Greenland, ice core, climate and environmental record