WAIS Divide Camp Opens for 2009/10 Season
Posted November 2, 2009
Photo Credit: Raytheon Polar Services
The put-in team, led by camp manager Theresa "T" Tran, arrived yesterday (November 2, local time) at WAIS Divide via Basler (5.5 hour direct flight from McM) after 10 days of weather delays. Onsite temperature was -49 degrees C. Skiway is in good shape and should be able to accept LC-130 Hercules flights within a couple of days after a good grooming and touchups are completed.
Good news is all cargo, modules, and equipment wintered well with minimal drifting allowing them to get the CAT 953 and one Tucker up and running in record time. Our experiment with wintering over the power poles and service cable worked fine, but the poles did create significant drifting that will need to be groomed down. The arch is as expected - still buried with some new winter drifting.
The overall schedule remains behind by 10 days at this point, however, once the carpenter crew arrives and camp construction gets started in the next several days, T will be able to better evaluate the schedule and any opportunities to get it back on track. For now, expect equal delays in any major activities scheduled for WAIS Divide until further notice. There is still a long way to go before any basic structures are up and running to accommodate additional persons.
Update provided by Matthew Kippenhan.
2009/2010 Media & Public Guide Now Available
Posted August 15, 2009
For the latest news from the WAIS Divide field camp, read the Project Updates.
WAIS Divide Camp Is Now Open for the Season
Posted November 3, 2008
Photo Credit: Raytheon Polar Services
WAIS Divide opened on Saturday, 11/01, via Basler at 2 pm. They refueled the Basler and were in the modules by 3 pm. They quickly turned on heat, got the generators going, and ran propane in the galley. Most things wintered well, although the vehicles were parked too close together and snow packed in between them. It took a lot of shoveling to free them of snow. Also, a vent cover blew off one of the perfection stove stacks and packed tight with snow. The arch has drifted a lot, but you can still see some metal on the smaller arch building. All of the heavy equipment is running, as well as four snow machines. One snow machine is not working well and they may need to return it to McMurdo. The rest of the snow machines have not been found yet. Hopefully, they are buried nicely someplace on the cargo berm. The Tucker has a broken spring and the mechanic will replace it soon. The McM and WSD fuelies are setting up the fuel system today. The heavy equipment operator started grooming the skiway today to prepare for a backup flight in two days. WAIS is a primary flight on both Thursday and Friday and five missions are proposed for next week. It has been sunny but windy each day, between -32 C and -35 C.
Update provide by Cara Ferrier
The Antarctic Sun News Story:: Deep into WAIS Divide - Project continues major effort to recover high-resolution climate record of last 100,000 years
October 31, 2008
Photo Credit: Kendrick Taylor, Desert Research Institute
Antarctica isn't known for its stellar weather. The vast continent boasts relentless, scouring winds that blow from the plains to the coast and wintertime temperatures below minus 70 degrees Celsius.
Although largely a polar desert, some spots receive relatively heavy snowfall. If you're a scientist who wants to study the past 100,000 years of climate in unprecedented detail, you head to one of these areas of high accumulation, where an ice core drilled through the 3.5-kilometer-thick ice sheet will reveal fat layers of climatic history.
Full Story (opens in new window)...
The Antarctic Sun News Story:: Connecting the pieces - Antarctic ice core to improve greenhouse gas climate record
October 31, 2008
Photo Credit: Eric Cravens/National Ice Core Laboratory
It's been about 20 years since the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs initiated a program to recover an ice core from the ice-covered island of Greenland.
The Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2), which followed an earlier ice core drilling project with the Europeans in the 1970s and 1980s, recovered the longest core of ice at the time - 3,053.44 meters. Findings from the project showed abrupt changes in climate, extreme shifts in just a few years, among other revelations.
Now the U.S. Antarctic Program is in the midst of its most ambitious ice-coring project to date - the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core (WAIS Divide) program, a multi-year project funded by the NSF to improve the paleoclimate record of the last 100,000 years.
The 3,500-meter-long WAIS core, when compared and added to GISP2 data and other global climate records, will provide a fuller picture of climate change, particularly during the last glaciation, a generally colder period of time that lasted about 60,000 years and ended about 10,000 years ago.
Full Story (opens in new window)...
The Antarctic Sun News Story:: Biological pulse - WAIS Divide project searches for life in the ice
October 31, 2008
Photo Credit: John Priscu, Montana State University
Outside of penguins and seals that congregate on the continent's coastal fringes, Antarctica appears to be a lifeless cube of ice, where only humans have the temerity to venture and survive for brief periods of time.
But John Priscu sees the ice sheets as home to a potentially rich community of microorganisms - life lived at the extreme. A professor at the Montana State University in Bozeman, Priscu heads up the biological component of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core (WAIS Divide) program, a multi-year project to build the most detailed paleoclimate record from an ice core to date.
Full Story (opens in new window)...
Final Version - Replicate Coring and Borehole Logging Science and Implementation Plan
Posted October 27, 2008
NSF News Release:: Gas From the Past Gives Scientists New Insights into Climate and the Oceans
Posted October 3, 2008
Photo: Courtesy of Oregon State University
In recent years, public discussion of climate change has included concerns that increased levels of carbon dioxide will contribute to global warming, which in turn may change the circulation in the earth's oceans, with potentially disastrous consequences.
In a paper published today in the journal Science, researchers presented new data from their analysis of ice core samples and ocean deposits dating as far back as 90,000 years ago and suggest that warming, carbon dioxide levels and ocean currents are tightly inter-related. These findings provide scientists with more data and insights into how these phenomena were connected in the past and may lead to a better understanding of future climate trends. Full Story >>
Draft WAIS Divide Basal Science and Implementation Plan Now Available for Community Comment
Posted September 3, 2008
The draft WAIS Divide Basal Science and Implementation Plan is available for community input. On October 3 the Executive Committee will meet to discuss both the Basal Sampling and the Replicate Coring and Borehole Logging Science and Implementation Plans. Anyone who is interested can join this discussion. After the discussions, the Executive Committee will consider either requesting changes to the science and implementation plans, or endorsing them as they are currently written. After the plans are endorsed by the Executive Committee they will be considered to be representative of our communities interests and sent to NSF. Hopefully this will clear the way for the submission of proposals in June that are relevant to these plans.
If you want to contribute to this process it is important that you read
both the plans before the meeting.
Dear Colleague Letter - WAIS Divide Basal Sampling
Posted June 13, 2008
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to draw attention of the Antarctic geology, glaciology, geochemistry, and microbiology communities to the potential opportunity for coring subglacial materials at the WAIS Divide ice core site in January 2012 or later. Preliminary results of a seismic site survey performed by Dr. Anandakrishnan's research group (Penn State) in 2007 suggest ~10m thick sedimentary unit overlying ~140m thick high-velocity, high-density unit (potentially basalt?).
The existing sampling plan envisaged taking a 4m-long core of subglacial sediments. However, the drilling/sampling technology and the environmental permits for this are not finalized and are the subject of a "WAIS Divide Basal Science and Implementation Plan" due to be completed soon.
More...
August 2008 Quarterly Update from the Science Coordination Office Now Available
Posted August 27, 2008
Design Modifications for Recovering 4-Meter Ice Cores with the DISC Drill
Posted August 11, 2008
Ice Coring and Drilling Services has released a white paper on design modifications they are evaluating for the purpose of increasing the lengths of core they can recover with the DISC drill to 4 meters. Download the White Paper (opens in new window)...
Draft Replicate Coring and Borehole Logging Science and Implementation Plan Now Available for Community Comment
Posted July 10, 2008
The draft Replicate Coring and Borehole Logging Science and Implementation Plan is available for community input. All comments should be sent to Dr. Jeff Severinghaus (jseveringhaus "at" ucsd.edu) by Sept. 30.
Video Now Available: Climate Change - A Report from Antarctica: WAIS Divide Ice Core
Posted June 23, 2008
Dr. Kendrick Taylor of the Desert Research Institute is the Chief Scientist for the WAIS Divide Ice Core project. In this video, Kendrick takes you on a tour around the camp, discusses the process by which ice cores are drilled and extracted from the ice sheet, and explains the importance of ice cores in the overall understanding of Earth's climate history and current climate change.
More...
WAIS Divide Outreach website
Posted June 2, 2008
The WAIS Divide Outreach Program (WDOP) is an educational site dedicated to improving the understanding of ice coring and how it pertains to the study of climate change. Our site is made available to anyone who has an interest in learning how scientists go about unraveling the climate history of the Earth, however, our focus is mainly on K-12 teachers and students. The WDOP is operated by the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University.
More...
March 2008 Quarterly Update from the Science Coordination Office Now Available
Posted March 20, 2008
Press Release: New Antarctic Ice Core to Provide Clearest Climate Record Yet
Posted January 22, 2008
Photo Credit: Kendrick Taylor, Desert Research Institute
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. Full Story >>
December 2007 Quarterly Update from the Science Coordination Office Now Available
Posted December 19, 2007
Media + Public Guide Now Available
Posted November 5, 2007
The WAIS Divide Science Coordination Office is pleased to announce the release of a 'Media + Public Guide'. The 'Media + Public Guide' can be downloaded here. An updated 'Media + Public Guide' will likely be released before the beginning of each Antarctic field season.
Six Person Put-In Crew Safely Arrived at WAIS Divide
Posted October 29, 2007
We are very happy to report that on 24-October six camp staff safely arrived to WAIS Divide via a Basler airplane and started the long process of digging the camp out. This was the first winter-over with all of the field camp stored outside on cargo lines, rather than stored inside the arch facility as during the 2006 winter. It is expected to take several weeks to get the camp up and running to the point where it can support larger populations. Once email and internet capabilities are established at camp we hope to receive some pictures from the put-in flight and will post them in the photo gallery.
August 2007 Quarterly Update from the Science Coordination Office Now Available
Posted August 29, 2007
2006-2007 Field Season at WAIS Divide Has Come To A Close
Posted February 2007
The second field season for the WAIS Divide Ice Core project ended on February 7, 2007. This season's science activities included collecting a 130 meter long ice core outside of the arch facility, collecting a 114 meter long ice core from the pilot hole for the main deep ice core, installation of the casing for the main borehole, installation of the gantry crane that will be used to set up the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill next season, optical borehole logging in shallow boreholes around WAIS Divide, snowpit chemistry work, and the second phase of construction on the arch interior. More information about this past season’s science activities can be found at:
http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/fieldreports/index.html
Visit the photo gallery from the 2006/2007 field season for a visual review of this season's activities at WAIS Divide.
Drilling of the WAIS Divide Deep Ice Core Has Started!
December 9, 2006
Historic news! Joe Souney (UNH, WAIS Divide SCO) reports that on Saturday, December 9 at 13:45 the first section of ice core was recovered from the main WAIS Divide borehole. This project has been in the planning phase for more than 15 years and it's great news to hear that the deep ice core has begun. Congratulations and thanks to all those who have helped over the years!
Camp Staff Safely Made it into WAIS Divide
October 30, 2006
The camp staff safely made it into WAIS Divide a couple of days ago and so the 2006-2007 field season is underway! Current temperatures at WAIS Divide are -46 degrees F. The large berm that the camp modules and equipment were staged on filled in heavily but held their ground. The galley, washroom, and mechanic's shop all wintered well (drifted) and were dry inside. The arch facility wintered well. It took one full day to access the end walls via shovels. The outside wall (away from the camp) was drifted in heavily. Snow is reaching near the top of the small arch and 1/2-way up the tall arch as expected but not desired after the first winter.
October 2006 Quarterly Update from the Science Coordination Office Now Available
Posted October 30, 2006
DISC Drill Test Season at Summit Greenland A Success
Posted September 2006
The DISC Drill test season at Summit Greenland (April-August 2006) was a huge success. The operation and performance of the drill in both ductile and brittle ice was extensively tested and evaluated to optimize core quality. Other than not being able to drill a full four-meter core in one run, all testing goals were fullfilled and in many cases exceeded. Core quality and the drill’s ability to drill brittle ice were excellent from the start. There were minor problems and challenges, but for a completely new drill system that had never been fully assembled and operated as a system the season went extremely well.
2005/2006 Field Season Ends
Posted February 3, 2006
The 2005-2006 WAIS Divide field season ended on Friday, February 3 after completely winterizing the camp facilities and equipment. This was a great first season at WAIS Divide. The initial put-in was three weeks behind schedule due to weather and issues related to landing the LC-130s at a new location. However, thanks to excellent support by RPSC, all the objectives for the season were met. Information about the season's science activities can be found at: http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/fieldreports/index.html
2005/2006 Field Season Begins!
Posted November 2006
After a 20-day delay due to poor weather and issues associated with LC-130 landings at the new site, the 2005-2006 field season at WAIS Divide is now underway. The field camp is being setup, the skiway is marked and groomed, and up to 4 flights a day are being scheduled. If the weather holds so we can get the flights in, we will end the season back on track.
WAIS Divide Ice Core Project
This site is administered by the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project Science Coordination Office (Desert Research Institute and University of New Hampshire). This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under award OPP-0440817 to the Desert Research Institute, Nevada System of Higher Education. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
_small.jpg)
Antarctica isn't known for its stellar weather. The vast continent boasts relentless, scouring winds that blow from the plains to the coast and wintertime temperatures below minus 70 degrees Celsius.
This site is administered by the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project Science Coordination Office (Desert Research Institute and University of New Hampshire). This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under award OPP-0440817 to the Desert Research Institute, Nevada System of Higher Education. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.