Description
Chairs:
Engineer Oliver Alemany and Dr. Barbera Seth
Recent studies have shown that stratigraphically disturbed meteoric ice bedded at Vostok Station between 3318 and 3538 m dates back to 1.2 Ma BP, and possibly beyond (Lipenkov et al., 2019). As part of the VOICE (Vostok Oldest Ice Challenge) initiative, in the 2018/19 austral season, a new deviation from parent hole 5G-1 was made at depths of 3266-3291 m with the aim of obtaining a replicate...
While drilling deep boreholes in Antarctica and Greenland researchers from many countries have faced serious challenges already at the depths over 2500 m, while below 3000 m these complications turned so dramatic that further penetration was almost impossible. This phenomenon was even given its proper name, i.e. ‘warm ice drilling issue’, as with increasing depth the ice temperature is rising....
The Intermediate Depth Drill (IDD), designed and built by the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group (now IDP), was used to drill a 1,751 meter deep ice core during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 field seasons at the South Pole for the South Pole Ice core (SPICEcore) project. A team of 10 people worked 6 days per week, 24 hours per day, in 3 shifts to recover the 98 mm diameter ice cores, up to...
EGRIP camp was established in 2015 by packing down the former NEEM drilling camp and pulling all materials and structures, including the main building on ski to the EGRIP site by a 440 km traverse train. For the first time on the Greenland ice sheet, nothing was left behind, except for the borehole and 25 ton broken and buried timber roofs of the former underground trenches. At EGRIP all...
The results of operations to penetrate into the subglacial lake proved that with the differential pressure of -0.2 MPa, lake water ingresses into the borehole through the annular clearance between the drilling assembly and the borehole walls, rising up to 15 meters above the drilling assembly. While rising through the annular space, the water mixes up with the filling liquid. This creates an...
Beginning in program year 2016, Ice Drilling Design and Operations (now IDP) began working with the Ice Drilling Program Office, science community representatives, and the Antarctic Support Contract personnel to conduct an analysis on using the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill for the next U.S. deep ice coring project versus using an adaptation of the Intermediate Depth Drill (IDD), now...
In the 2018/19 austral field season, we successful drilled an ice core to bedrock at a depth of 651 m on Skytrain Ice Rise situated at the south of the Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica. The team of six (for much of the season) comprised five driller/logger staff, and one person to manage the camp. The full project took place over a single field season, including setting up and tearing down of the...
