Fieldwork

On October 31, IDP/SSEC Engineers Jay Johnson, Andrew Haala, Dusty Brunner, and Driller Elizabeth Morton headed south to support the NSF COLDEX project (PIs Sarah Shackleton and John Higgins; I-187-M) at Allan Hills, Antarctica. After a one-day delay in Christchurch (CHC), New Zealand, they arrived at McMurdo Station (MCM), Antarctica, on November 6 and then to Allan Hills on November 18. The team plans to use the large-diameter Blue Ice Drill and a smaller diameter fluid-enabled drill to drill cores at different locations. After a lengthy stay in Christchurch due to weather delays, IDP Engineer Elliot Moravec and Driller Forest Harmon arrived at McMurdo Station on November 29 and are awaiting a flight to Taylor Dome where they will operate the Eclipse Drill and the IDDO Hand Auger and Sidewinder to collect firn cores in support of PI Kaitlin Keegan’s (I-162-M) firn evolution project. IDP Engineer Tanner Kuhl and Jim Koehler are scheduled to deploy to Seymour Island via the R/V Sikuliaq where they will aid in drill site reconnaissance and operate the SIPRE Hand Auger and a PI-provided Shaw Drill in support of PI Thomas Tobin’s (G-296-N) project. At Flask Glacier, PI Jonathan Kingslake’s (I-347-E) team will operate an IDDO Hand Auger to drill several shallow firn cores to investigate the influence of meltwater on Antarctic ice sheet dynamics. And at South Pole Station, PI Albrecht Karl’s IceCube upgrade project (A-334-M/S) will operate the Deep Logging Winch to log one of their newly drilled deep holes with an oriented dust logger.

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If you are preparing a National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal that includes any kind of support from IDP, you must include a Letter of Support from IDP in the proposal. Researchers are asked to provide IDP with a detailed support request six weeks prior to the date the Letter of Support is required. Early submissions are strongly encouraged.

Scientists who seek to include IDP education and outreach activities associated with U.S. ice coring or drilling science projects should contact Louise Huffman at Louise.T.Huffman@Dartmouth.edu during their proposal preparation stage.

For additional information on requesting IDP support, visit our website at https://icedrill.org/requesting-field-support or contact us at IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu.

The NSF Ice Drilling Program (IDP), in collaboration with its Science Advisory Board and with input from the research community, updated the Long Range Science Plan. This plan aims to articulate goals and make recommendations for the direction of U.S. ice coring and drilling science across a wide variety of areas of scientific inquiry and to provide recommendations for the development of drilling technology, infrastructure, and logistical support necessary to enable the science. A companion document, the Long Range Drilling Technology Plan, provides details about drills available through IDP. Both plans are revisited and revised as appropriate each spring. The Long Range Science Plan is available at https://icedrill.org/long-range-science-plan. The Long Range Drilling Technology Plan is available at https://icedrill.org/long-range-drilling-technology-plan.

If you envision the need for ice drilling for your project in the coming decade, please make sure that the high-level articulation of your science is captured in the Long Range Science Plan. If it isn’t, send several sentences to IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu describing the science driver and the envisioned field date and location for your project so that your plans are voiced in this planning document.

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IDP provided field support for two projects during the 2025 spring/summer field season. PIs Joel Harper and Toby Meierbachtol (NSF award numbers 2113391 and 2113392) used an IDDO Hand Auger and Sidewinder at several locations in southwest Greenland for their research, which has established a network of instrumented sites to observe the transformation of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s percolation zone firn layer. Harper’s team utilized the redesigned Sidewinder-V2 (version 2), reporting that it worked very well, is small and lightweight for helicopter transport, and is a game changer in those regards. And in Alaska, PI Christian Andresen (NSF award number 2239038) used a SIPRE Hand Auger for research that aims to characterize the role of Arctic wetland ponds in regional land-atmosphere carbon exchange, estimate the ponds' contributions of methane to the atmosphere, and assess how they have changed over the past 50 years to better anticipate their future role in Arctic carbon cycling.

Over the summer, the IDP team worked to repair and maintain several drill systems, many of which will be deployed during the upcoming 2025/26 Antarctic field season. A penetration drive and a load cell were added to the Blue Ice Drill to provide the operators with finer control and more feedback, and a new steel core barrel was fabricated, along with large quantities of carbide cutter inserts. These modifications are an effort to improve core quality in the challenging ice conditions encountered at Allan Hills and beyond. The team also worked to develop the Shallow Wet Drill, which is not a new, standalone drill per se, but features the combining of several components from existing drills in inventory (e.g. Foro 400 anti-torque sections, Foro 1650 motor sections, 700 Drill winch/tower/tent, etc.) with new core barrel components to assemble a drill for testing shallow wet drilling operations at Allan Hills. IDP also designed and is fabricating several tower lifting fixtures to increase safety during the field operation of raising drill towers. IDP anticipates deploying 8 team members for the upcoming field season. In early September, 26 pallets and 16,000+ pounds of equipment departed Madison for Port Hueneme, CA, where it will travel to either Christchurch, New Zealand, or Punta Arenas, Chile, via ship.

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(1) The Collaborative Research: AON Network for Observing Transformation of the Greenland Ice Sheet Firn Layer project (PIs Joel Harper and Toby Meierbachtol; NSF award numbers 2113391 and 2113392) will establish a network of instrumented sites to observe the transformation of the Greenland Ice sheet’s percolation zone firn layer. Using the IDDO Hand Auger and Sidewinder, repeat cores are being collected over five years to track density and ice content changes, and instrumentation installed in boreholes will monitor firn temperature evolution and compaction of the firn layer. The data from these efforts will be of high value to scientists focused on changes in storage capacity of the firn layer, process details of meltwater infiltration in cold firn, and the influence of firn compaction and melt on satellite-observed ice sheet elevation.

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(2) The CAREER: Characterizing Feedbacks in Arctic Ponds while Incorporating Next-Generation Technologies and Arctic Field Experiences in Education project (PI Christian Andresen; NSF award number 2239038) will characterize the role of Arctic wetland ponds in regional land-atmosphere carbon exchange, estimate their contributions of methane to the atmosphere, and assess how they have changed over the past 50 years to better anticipate their future role in Arctic carbon cycling and feedbacks to climate. Wetlands represent a significant portion of the Arctic landscape and are characterized by their numerous polygonal thaw ponds. These Arctic pond habitats are hotspots for biodiversity and carbon cycling. Particularly, ponds are key emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The researchers will use a SIPRE Hand Auger to assist in setting up eddy covariance flux towers that measure methane and carbon dioxide fluxes from tundra ponds, and meteorological information.

At Dome C in East Antarctica, IDP engineer/driller Jay Johnson used the 4-Inch Drill to support the I-159-E project (PI Vas Petrenko). The drilling goal was to complete one 300-meter-deep core near Concordia Station. Drilling began on November 19, 2024, and finished on January 5, 2025. Over the seven weeks, two cores were drilled with the 4-Inch Drill, one to 302.5 meters and a second to 195 meters, surpassing the drilling goal for the season. The drilling was conducted in temperatures that averaged -25°C to - 30°C with -30°C to -40°C wind chills. The project is a collaboration between the US National Science Foundation and the French Polar Institute, who also collected two ice cores using their own drill. The researchers are measuring in situ cosmogenic carbon-14 of carbon monoxide (14CO) and carbon-14 of methane (14CH4).

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At Mount Waesche in West Antarctica, IDP engineer/driller Elliot Moravec and driller Forest Harmon used the Eclipse Drill and Winkie Drill to support the G-065-M project (PIs Matthew Zimmerer, Nelia Dunbar, Bill Mcintosh, and Seth Campbell). Using the Winkie Drill, the team successfully recovered three subglacial porous lava bedrock cores from holes between 50-85 meters deep, the first core being 92 cm long, the second 78 cm long, and the third 57 cm long. The project team will use cosmogenic nuclide inventories and 40Ar/39Ar dating of the subglacial cores to constrain West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) elevation during the last interglacial. Using the Eclipse Drill, the team drilled two ice cores, one to 40 meters and one to 30 meters. The researchers will use the cores to help constrain the age – using isotopic measurements of the overlying and underlying ice – of sub-glacial unconformities in the WAIS adjacent to Mt Waesche that record the downdraw of the ice sheet surface. Lastly, the science team used the Chipmunk Drill to collect over 400 samples of short, vertically oriented ice cores along a 4 km transect across a vertically oriented ash-bearing blue ice sequence.

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At Allan Hills in East Antarctica, IDP engineer/driller Andrew Haala and driller Elizabeth Morton used the Blue Ice Drill (BID) and Eclipse Drill to support the I-187-M NSF COLDEX (Center for Oldest Ice Exploration) project (PI Ed Brook). The notoriously strong winds at Allan Hills delayed the setup of the drill tents and drills. Once set up, the science team used the BID to re-enter a borehole started during the 2023/24 field season. After drilling through several rocks, the hole was finished at 192 meters depth. Using the Eclipse Drill, the science team re-entered an Eclipse borehole started during the 2023/24 season. After two days of trying to drill past a rock that halted progress in 2023/24, the borehole was abandoned, and a new hole started. Drilling in the new hole reached 89 meters, and then a “rock” was encountered. This is the same depth that a “rock” was encountered in a nearby borehole last season, so it is possible the drilling may have reached bedrock. The science team also used a hand auger and the new Sidewinder to drill several cores at the cul-de-sac site to help establish drilling goals for the 2025/26 field season.

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On the Ross Ice Shelf, the D-550-M science team (PI Pedro Elosegui) used a Kovacs Mark II hand auger to take 3-meter-depth density measurements of the Ross Ice Shelf firn. The density measurements were necessary for the team’s Seismogeodetic Ice Penetrator project, in which two ice penetrators outfitted with seismic and GNSS instrumentation were airdropped 5000 feet via helicopter. The impact force on sensitive payloads and overall impact depth strongly depends on the density of the firn that the penetrator hits. The science team completed two density samples before the airdrops to verify the suitability of the firn per their impact dynamics models and then collected another density sample after each airdrop for model verification.

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The T-940-M (McMurdo Shear Zone) and T-941-M (Leverett Glacier) technical projects (PI Renee Melendy; Field Lead Zoe Courville) used a hand auger to drill short cores (1-4 meters depth) to determine snow density along the South Pole Traverse route, for examining snow bridge properties over crevasses along the Leverett Glacier to update crevasse crossing criteria in the region, to retrieve cores to shallow blue ice layers to validate the depths of ground penetrating radar profiles, to compare snow properties along the South Pole Traverse route, both on and off the route, and to determine the impact of snow compaction from tractor travel over the route.

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If you are preparing a National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal that includes any kind of support from IDP, you must include a Letter of Support from IDP in the proposal. Researchers are asked to provide IDP with a detailed support request six weeks prior to the date the Letter of Support is required. Early submissions are strongly encouraged.

Scientists who seek to include IDP education and outreach activities associated with U.S. ice coring or drilling science projects should contact Louise Huffman at Louise.T.Huffman@Dartmouth.edu during their proposal preparation stage.

For additional information on requesting IDP support, visit our website at https://icedrill.org/requesting-field-support or contact us at IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu.

IDP is providing support to the following projects during the 2024-2025 Antarctic field season: 

(1) The Collaborative Research: Using New Ice Cores from Dome C to Test the Assumption of a Constant Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux and Improve Understanding of the Holocene Methane Budget project (PI Vas Petrenko, NSF award 2146131) will obtain new ice cores in Antarctica in collaboration with the French Polar Institute. The project aims to improve our understanding of the history of cosmic rays originating from outside our solar system. Records of atmospherically produced cosmogenic nuclides have been used to reconstruct past solar activity and solar irradiance. Cosmogenic nuclides produced in surface rock are widely used in studies of past ice dynamics and extent. All these studies generally assume that the galactic cosmic ray flux at Earth is constant in time, but this is uncertain by 30% or more. Using the 4-Inch Drill, the researchers will drill two ~300-meter-long ice cores from the Dome C region of Antarctica. This project will use measurements of in situ cosmogenic carbon-14 of carbon monoxide (14CO) in the newly drilled ice cores to test the assumption of constant galactic cosmic ray flux. The researchers will also measure carbon-14 of methane (14CH4) to help improve our understanding of the Holocene methane budget. 

(2) The Collaborative Research: EAGER: Dating Glacier Retreat and Readvance near Mount Waesche, West Antarctica project (PI Seth Campbell, NSF award 2210092) aims to obtain glaciological and geological data on the past extent of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A key location for determining this ice extent is Mount Waesche, a volcano that rises above the ice surface near the dome of the ice sheet. Previous field expeditions to the Mt. Waesche volcano in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica, used ground-penetrating radar to map the area’s sub-ice topography and internal glacial layering. These radar profiles revealed discontinuities within the ice that represent lower ice levels that may have occurred in the past. This project aims to enhance the team’s rock core drilling program at Mount Waesche by dating the discontinuities in the ice. Using the Eclipse Drill, the team will collect ice cores from above and below the discontinuities to constrain the ages of the discontinuities. Isotopic and tephra analysis will be used to provide age constraints on the ice cores. The researchers will also use the Chipmunk Drill to collect a series of short cores across vertically oriented ash-bearing ice sequences for subsequent oxygen isotope analysis. These data will be correlated with other, well-dated West Antarctic ice cores to obtain a local chronology and date the discontinuities. This exploratory work aims to provide data that complement the results from subglacial rock cores to constrain surface-elevation change better, including both retreat and readvance, since the last interglacial.

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(3) The Collaborative Research: Constraining West Antarctic Ice Sheet Elevation during the last Interglacial project (PI Matthew Zimmerer, NSF award 1745015) aims to collect a novel dataset to determine how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) responded to a warmer climate during the last interglacial period (~125,000 years ago) by reconstructing the glacial history at the Mt. Waesche volcano in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. Reconstructing WAIS geometry when the ice sheet was smaller than present is difficult, and data are lacking because the evidence lies beneath the present ice sheet. The scientists will use the Eclipse Drill and Winkie Drill to drill through the ice sheet and recover bedrock that can be analyzed for its surface exposure history to help determine when the surface became overridden by the ice sheet. The research will constrain the WAIS’s past maximum and minimum spatial extent during the last glacial-interglacial cycle. 

(4) The NSFGEO-NERC: Investigating the Direct Influence of Meltwater on Antarctic Ice Sheet Dynamics project (PI Jonathan Kingslake, NSF award 2053169) aims to examine the response of the flow of an Antarctic Peninsula outlet glacier (Flask Glacier) to surface meltwater. Satellite observations suggest that Antarctic Peninsula outlet glaciers speed up during surface melt events. The researchers will make field observations of surface melting, ice dynamics, and surface conditions on Flask Glacier to investigate if Antarctic Peninsula outlet glaciers speed up during surface melt events. The researchers will use an IDDO Hand Auger to drill several shallow firn cores. The firn cores will be used to constrain firn stratigraphy to help determine how temporal changes in near-surface water content affect satellite-based velocity measurements. 

(5) The STC: Center for OLDest Ice EXploration project (PI Ed Brook, NSF award number 2019719) will use the Blue Ice Drill, the Eclipse Drill, and the IDDO Hand Auger and Sidewinder to drill several cores from the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area. Cores drilled through the Antarctic ice sheet provide a remarkable window into the evolution of Earth’s climate and unique samples of the ancient atmosphere. The clear link between greenhouse gases and climate revealed by ice cores underpins much of the scientific understanding of climate change. Unfortunately, the existing data do not extend far enough back in time to reveal key features of climates that are warmer than today. COLDEX is solving this problem by exploring Antarctica for sites to collect the oldest possible record of past climate recorded in the ice sheet. The cores collected at Allan Hills will contribute to our understanding of how Earth’s climate system operated during warmer periods and why the periodicity of glacial cycles lengthened from 40,000 to 100,000 years approximately 1 million years ago.

In early November, IDP Engineers Tanner Kuhl and Andrew Haala, and Driller Elizabeth Morton headed south to support the NSF COLDEX project at Allan Hills, Antarctica. The team plans to use the large-diameter Blue Ice Drill and an Eclipse Drill to re-enter and deepen holes started during the 2023-2024 season, and to drill additional holes. IDP Engineer Jay Johnson left home one week later and made it to French Station Dome C in East Antarctica in record time after traveling through Christchurch, New Zealand, and Mario Zucchelli Station in Antarctica. It was a chilly start at the station, with temperatures as low as -50°F and wind chills as low as -80°F, but drilling with the 4-Inch Drill is well underway! Engineer Elliot Moravec and Driller Forest Harmon deployed shortly after and are currently in McMurdo, awaiting a flight out to WAIS Divide and Mt. Waesche in West Antarctica, where they will operate a Winkie Drill and an Eclipse Drill.

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Back in Madison, Wisconsin, the IDP-Operations team initiated work on a short-duration development project called Shallow Wet Drill Development. Over the next year, the team will work to integrate components from the existing Foro 1650 Drill, Foro 400 Drill, and 700 Drill and develop several new components and control electronics to enable shallow wet drilling at Allan Hills during the 2025-2026 season. Through the use of drilling fluid, IDP hopes to improve the quality of ice cores collected in the strained and dirty ice in the Allan Hills region.

The U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP), in collaboration with its Science Advisory Board and with input from the research community, updated the Long Range Science Plan. This plan aims to articulate goals and make recommendations for the direction of U.S. ice coring and drilling science in a wide variety of areas of scientific inquiry and to make recommendations for the development of drilling technology, infrastructure, and logistical support needed to enable the science. A companion document, the Long Range Drilling Technology Plan, provides details about drills available through IDP. Both plans are revisited and revised as appropriate each spring. The Long Range Science Plan is available at https://icedrill.org/long-range-science-plan. The Long Range Drilling Technology Plan is available at https://icedrill.org/long-range-drilling-technology-plan.

If you envision the need for ice drilling for your project in the coming decade, please make sure that the high-level articulation of your science is captured in the Long Range Science Plan. If it isn’t, send several sentences to IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu describing the science driver and the envisioned field date and location for your project so that your plans are voiced in this planning document.

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In August 2024, the U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) received a National Science Foundation renewal grant for the coming five years (award number 2318480) to continue providing community leadership and to operate and maintain a facility to support ice drilling engineering, field support, and education and outreach. IDP’s mission is to conduct integrated planning for the ice drilling science and technology communities and to provide drilling technology and operational support that will enable the community to advance the frontiers of science. 

If you are preparing an NSF proposal that includes any support from IDP, you must include a Letter of Support from IDP in the proposal. Researchers are asked to provide IDP with a detailed support request three weeks prior to the date the Letter of Support is required. Early submissions are strongly encouraged.

Scientists who seek to include IDP education and outreach activities associated with U.S. ice coring or drilling science projects should contact Louise Huffman at Louise.T.Huffman@Dartmouth.edu during their proposal preparation stage.

For additional information on requesting IDP support, visit our website at https://icedrill.org/requesting-field-support or contact us at IceDrill@Dartmouth.edu.

Between April and July, IDP deployed ten people to Greenland for a variety of projects, leaving two people in Madison, WI, for the summer. A team of five deployed for the second season of the GreenDrill project (NSF award numbers 1933927, 1933938, 1934477, 1933802). While ASIG Drill operations were canceled due to an inability to land LC-130 Hercules aircraft at the field site, Engineers Elliot Moravec and Tanner Kuhl and Driller Forest Rubin Harmon succeeded in collecting subglacial rock core with the Winkie Drill in two boreholes. A team of five also deployed to Summit Station to support PI Eric Saltzman’s project (NSF award number 2243540) with the new 700 Drill and to conduct driller training in a tent adjacent to the 700 Drill site. Newer IDP Engineers and Drillers received some initial cross-training on the use of the 700 Drill, Foro 400 Drill, Eclipse Drill, and smaller equipment like the Chipmunk Drill and a Hand Auger used in conjunction with the new prototype Sidewinder.

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IDP is also supporting several PI-operated hand auger projects in Greenland and Alaska. PIs Joel Harper and Toby Meierbachtol (NSF award numbers 2113391 and 2113392) used an IDDO Hand Auger and Sidewinder at several locations in southwest Greenland to drill cores to 30 meters depth. PIs Kathy Licht and Trinity Hamilton (NSF award numbers 2039854 and 2039582) are using a SIPRE Hand Auger to sample the seasonal ice that forms in front of Greenland’s Isunnguata Sermia Glacier and Leverett Glacier. PI Christian Andresen (NSF award number 2239038) is using a SIPRE Hand Auger in Alaska in the set-up of eddy covariance flux towers that measure methane and carbon dioxide fluxes from tundra ponds, and  meteorological information. And PI Bora Cetin (NSF award number 2220518) is using a SIPRE Hand Auger with a Makita battery-powered earth auger tool to collect permafrost cores from Nome, Alaska.

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