WAIS Divide, Antarctica. 580 m new ice core. Work continues next two seasons

The WAIS Divide story begins practically next door, on Greenland.

free hit counters

Ice coring is a specialized exercise that requires some hits and misses and solid learning along the way. This is about the continuing adventure of DISC which started as a performance in Greenland, and then was moved to Antarctica.

PLEASE NOTE:
I copied this next section about Greenland setup and training, from a posting of mine that needs to be updated and this is on subject -- updating is what I am doing here.

(This was copied from:
http://www.xomba.com/ice_cores_air_temp_rises_before_co2_rises_explain_that_h2o_ignored_as_greenhouse_gas_contributing_to_rising_temperature_why)

How do you obtain an ice core?

This is DISC (Deep Ice Sheet Coring). DISC is a new Ice Drill. How would you drill for and recover ancient ice? Let me ask you; could you drill for ice like oil is drilled for? Well, yes, for about 1500 times the cost, and for more than a hundred times the pollution -- and in Antarctica, Halliburton would love to despoil the place. Make that 2500 times the cost. And maybe they would not want to see the story the ice tells. . . Thank goodness they are not invited. I hope they are never invited. Of course, that is my opinion. Could they change it? That is a good question. Could they grow green? (This could cool some of the Black Water guys off, give them constructive work, provide security for the cores. . .)

(PLEASE note: the file below is a 96 page pdf that is technical, and has few pictures. This is science on the cheap, since the current administration actively interferred with the top end operations and funding.)

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/icds/reports/IceCoreOptions.pdf

(PLEASE note: the file above is a 96 page pdf DON'T download it. Do it later if you want to read a large amount of cogent information about technical excellence and going without funds. No, it doesn't say that; you must read between the lines. )

The photo's below are of the recently designed ice core drill and this set-up of the equipment was done near Summit in 2006 on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Now all this equipment has been moved to the bottom of the planet, and some drilling has occurred at the location called WAIS Divide (West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Divide)

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Winter Cat D-6 Low Ground Pressure Track, sled with winch drum

As a contribution to IPY 2007-2008, the U.S. ice core research community,
supported by the National Science Foundation, plans to core through the
West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) at the ice-flow divide between the Ross Sea
and Amundsen Sea drainage systems ("WAIS Divide"). To accomplish the
coring the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill was built at the University
of Wisconsin.

The modular design of the bore-hole assembly (sonde) provides a high level of flexibility to produce a 122 mm (4.803 inch) diameter ice core to depths of 4,000 m with maximum core lengths of 4 m (13.12 ft.). The DISC drill has a rotating outer barrel that can be used with or without an inner non-rotating barrel -- designed to improve core recovery in brittle ice. The drill utilizes separate and independent motors for the pump and drill allowing cutter speeds from
0 to 150 rpm and pump rates from 0 to 140 gpm. A high speed data acquisition system gives "real time" monitoring of 30 parameters for both operational and scientific use. Data are transmitted from the sonde to the surface through optical fibers contained in the drill cable, which also provides power to the sonde. The drill incorporates a user-friendly "expert" control system. Quick connectors help provide fast core removal and fast sonde servicing. The drill tower structure which you will see below, contains a tilting tower utilizing modular truss construction for flexibility and portability.

The drill was tested in Greenland in the summer of 2006. Sent south for first drilling at the WAIS Divide site late in the 2006-07 austral field season.

The plan in Antarctica is to reach the ice sheet bed in the 2009-2010 season. Beyond that, the plan is to develop means for drilling into the bed(rock-soil) and for retrieving replicate cores in depth sections of particular interest. There will be a steady analysis of ice core materials over a number of years to arrive at the most definitive paleoclimate data

IMAGES FROM GREENLAND -- In the future, at least from Divide, you will not see "productive" cores handled like at Vostok, at least not the ones from which science will be done. The images below capture a part of how the extraction of ice cores is accomplished. It is a very sophisticated operation, and you earn your keep working with this drill and crew.

To see all images from DISC visit: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/icds/gallery/
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Moving the winch drum. Notice this is an older Caterpillar. Greenland is warmer than Antarctica, but cold is cold.

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Cutting the slot. This "slot" is long and skinny so that the core bearing stem and bit(sonde) can be swung from vertical to horizontal, then moved and aligned with the ice trays and the core pushed out. This Greenland exercise would point out many problems and the team would learn the solutions. Basically, this was a very good "dry run." a "proof of concept" and equipment operation.
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Setting the tower base. The positioning of this equipment is coordinated with other equipment that must work together.
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First Core! (Like an ice fish! And it is 'this long,' and it really fought! Look at all the ice core fishing gear! The truth is, it really did fight, but most of the fight was coordinating personnel and machines. New equipment must be debugged to be productive.)
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This is the core bit and the first core break. Record keeping is absolutely essential to keep the cores in order and precisely measure their lengths to determine how far into the past their information describes. This is a major, major job as more core is lifted from the drill hole. Timing in understanding climate is everything! A new system, to minimize human handling is about to be installed this coming fall (2007) in Antarctica, where the 2006-2007 operations have already provided some cores for processing.

This is a very clean "nice" core break!

The Big Ice: Antarctica

OKAY -- ? Below is about what "was" going on in Antarctica.

View of the WAIS Divide field camp from the air. This photo was taken by the put-in crew (late October 2007). Credit: Photo courtesy of RPSC (2007)

For the 2007-2008 season the WAIS Divide looks like this. Nobody stays here through the winter -- so this looks like what is expected. Drifts. Notice the airfield? (Me neither, really.)

Carpenter shop outside of the arch facility.
Photo: Jay Johnson (ICDS, 2006)

Image: UNH,edu and NSF

Visit this document for a field season overview:

http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/Reference/Download.pm/441/Document.

January 22, 2008

(Scheduling on tight budgets and weather curtails longer stays. Mostly it is the weather. The amount of work done toward the entire core length 580 m was a "miss" this season; the target was 800 m -- but solid work was accomplished. It takes time to work out all the little details!)

NSF text --
"After enduring months on the coldest, driest and windiest continent on Earth, researchers today closed out the inaugural season on an unprecedented, multi-year effort to retrieve the most detailed record of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere over the last 100,000 years."

"Working as part of the National Science Foundation's West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Project, a team of scientists, engineers, technicians and students from multiple U.S. institutions have recovered a 580-meter (1,900-foot) ice core--the first section of what is hoped to be a 3,465-meter (11,360-foot) column of ice detailing 100,000 years of Earth's climate history, including a precise year-by-year record of the last 40,000 years."

"The dust, chemicals and air trapped in the two-mile-long ice core will provide critical information for scientists working to predict the extent to which human activity will alter Earth's climate, according to the chief scientist for the project, Kendrick Taylor of the Desert Research Institute of the Nevada System of Higher Education. DRI, along with the University of New Hampshire, operate the Science Coordination Office for the WAIS Divide Project."

http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/wdop/index.html

Image: Tufts.edu, NSF supported location. WAIS Divide Village. There are 26 structures in this image, and at least 5 people are outside enjoying the weather! It appears to me that this is part of the setup and initial work stage, but there was no caption.

Rebecca Anderson, scientist at the Desert Research Institute, examines an ice core section.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Kendrick Taylor (DRI, 2008)

Transporting the DISC Drill's winch drum from McMurdo Station out to WAIS Divide via LC-130. The winch drum can hold 4,400 meters of cable.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Ursula Rick (2007)

"WAIS Divide, named for the high-elevation region that is the boundary separating opposing flow directions on the ice sheet, is the best spot on the planet to recover ancient ice containing trapped air bubbles--samples of the Earth's atmosphere from the present to as far back as 100,000 years ago."

2007/2008 WAIS Divide Team.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brian Bencivengo (USGS/NICL, 2008)

"While other ice cores have been used to develop longer records of Earth's atmosphere, the record from WAIS Divide will allow a more detailed study of the interaction of previous increases in greenhouse gases and climate change. This information will improve computer models that are used to predict how the current, unprecedented high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by human activity will influence future climate".

Rolling rack full of 1-meter long ice cores. The ice cores are 122 mm (4.8 inches) in diameter (about the size of a CD or DVD).
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brian Bencivengo (USGS/NICL, 2008)
(No,no, no! That's not Brian in the picture)

"The WAIS Divide core is also the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of a series of ice cores drilled in Greenland beginning in 1989, and will provide the best opportunity for scientists to determine if global-scale climate changes that occurred before human activity started to influence climate were initiated in the Arctic, the tropics or Antarctica."

Geoff Hargreaves with an air force pallet full of ice cores ready for retro to McMurdo Station, on the way back to the United States. Geoff Hargreaves' beard is not as white as it appears in the cold of this image.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Brian Bencivengo (USGS/NICL, 2008)

"The new core will also allow investigations of biological material in deep ice, which will yield information about biogeochemical processes that control and are controlled by climate, as well as lead to fundamental insights about life on Earth."

"Says [Kendrick] Taylor, "We are very excited to work with ancient ice that fell as snow as long as 100,000 years ago. We read the ice like other people might read a stack of old weather reports."

"The WAIS project took more than 15 years of planning and preparation, including extensive airborne reconnaissance and ground-based geophysical research, to pinpoint the one (less than a square mile) space on the 932,000-square-kilometer (360,000-square-mile) ice sheet that scientists believe will provide the clearest climate record for the last 100,000 years."

This is what camp looks like after a good storm.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Inger Seierstad (2007/2008)

"With only some 40 days a year when the weather is warm enough for drilling--yesterday's temperature was a balmy -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit)--it is expected to take until January 2010 to complete the fieldwork."

"For the project, Ice Coring and Drilling Services of the University of Wisconsin-Madison built and is operating a state-of-the-art, deep ice-coring drill, which is more like a piece of scientific equipment than a conventional rock drill used in petroleum exploration.

The U.S. Geological Survey, National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, designed the core handling system, and will be the likely final repository for the long term storage of the cores. Initially, the cores will be sent to investigators from UNH. Over roughly 20 years, USGS handled many ice cores and used this opportunity to design the core handling system to the highest standards possible to reduce manual handling and prevent damage to the core sections so the maximum scientific detail could be gleaned from their examination. Critical length merasures and keeping the cores in order is facilitated by the USGS designed system.

Technological advances and solid state electronics allow sensing of what is going on with the drill when it is coring it's way to bedrock. That cable I keep showing is the link to the drill, and is the power and communications essential to the coring project.

Raytheon Polar Services Corporation provides the logistical support. The NSF Office of Polar Programs-U.S. Antarctic Program funds the project. The core will be archived at the National Ice Core Laboratory, which is run by the USGS with funding from NSF."

-NSF-

See schedule here: http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/about/schedule.html

Borehole details here: http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/about/sitedetail.html

Site selection details: http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/about/siteselection.html

Visit the Gallery!
http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/blogs/index.html

http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/Gallery/ViewGallery?GALLERY_ID=221

A few of the photos

This is how camp looked when the put-in crew arrived to WAIS Divide in late October 2007---heavy drift (as expected).
Credit: Photo courtesy of RPSC (2007)

End of the drill with an Antarctic ice core in the barrel.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Jay Johnson (ICDS, 2007)

Time to say good-bye to WAIS Divide until next season. Heading back to McMurdo via the LC-130.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Brian Bencivengo (USGS/NICL, 2008)