Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group

The IDP Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group (ESAWG) had a successful in-person long-term science planning workshop on December 8, 2024, in Alexandria, VA. Workshop participants included an engaged group of 29 scientists with expertise ranging from subglacial geology, sediments & ecosystems to ice dynamics to borehole and englacial monitoring to engineering. The goal of the workshop was to find community consensus on priority science questions, locations, measurements, and technologies for englacial and subglacial science for the coming decade. The meeting started with remarks from Dr. Alex Isern, NSF Assistant Director for Geosciences. Early career scientist and ESAWG Chair Dr. Ryan Venturelli capably led discussions and planning activities.

Outcomes from the workshop include the identification of three key questions: 1) How will ice sheets contribute to sea level rise in the coming decades to century? 2) What drives grounding zone variability over tidal to millennial timescales? 3) How can we constrain bed conditions to better understand glacial basal sliding? 

Community priorities include: 

• Sub-ice access to the subglacial environment upstream and downstream of modern grounding zones 
• Deep subglacial access to test for smaller ice sheet configurations in both Greenland and Antarctica 
• Development of a smart hot water drill that enables deep (>3km) drilling and sample recovery from wet beds
• Development of technology to enable long-term subglacial observatories. 

White papers initiated at the workshop will be further developed, made available to the broader community for additional input, and finalized this winter to incorporate the results into the IDP Long Range Science Plan in spring 2025.

The U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) convenes a Science Advisory Board (SAB) to form and update the Long Range Science Plan that addresses multiple aspects of ice core and other ice science and associated technology. The annual SAB meeting was held in-person on February 15-16, 2024, in Arlington, VA. The first part of the meeting was an open session and included updates from IDP, the NSF Ice Core Facility, the Ice Core Working Group, and the Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group (ESAWG). It also included discussions regarding ESAWG planning, and Safe and Inclusive Plan templates. The second part of the meeting was a closed session in which the SAB prioritized the technology investments outlined in the Long Range Science Plan and discussed SAB member rotation and SAB Terms of Reference. 

The members of the SAB are: 

• T.J. Fudge, Chair (University of Washington) 
• Joel Harper (University of Montana) 
• Matthew Siegfried (Colorado School of Mines) 
• Sarah Shackleton (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) 
• Martin Truffer (University of Alaska Fairbanks) 
• Ryan Venturelli (Colorado School of Mines) 
• Trista Vick-Majors (Michigan Technological University)

With access to the polar ice sheets beginning to open following the pandemic years, the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) has recommended that the Subglacial Access Working Group (SAWG) and Borehole Logging Working Group (BLWG) cease as separate groups. Instead, a single new working group, the IDP Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group (ESAWG), is being formed. The ESAWG will provide an opportunity to develop and articulate new visions for U.S.-led englacial and subglacial science for the coming decade in the IDP Long Range Science Plan.