Long Range Planning

The NSF Ice Drilling Program (IDP) will hold the AGU Town Hall on Scientific Drilling in the Polar Regions on Wednesday, 17 December 2025, from 18:00-19:00 Central Standard Time (CST) in room 283-285 of the New Orleans Convention Center, New Orleans, Louisiana. All AGU Town Halls are in-person only this year (no live streaming). However, the AGU website states that “All town halls will be recorded (slides and audio) and posted in the mobile app for on-demand viewing within 72 hours of the session.” 

Abstract: Ice sheets, glaciers, and the underlying bedrock, sediment and permafrost hold crucial evidence about past conditions, ice sheet dynamics, and cratonic geology. National and international collaboration for drilling in the remote Polar Regions requires strategic coordination between science, technology, and logistics. This meeting will provide the research community with brief updates from the NSF Ice Drilling Program (IDP), ICECReW, NSF Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), and Hercules Dome. Opportunities for community involvement will be showcased, and input from the audience will be solicited.

Event: AGU Town Hall - TH35D - Scientific Drilling in the Polar Regions
Date: Wednesday, 17 December 2025
Time: 18:00-19:00 Central Standard Time (CST)
Location: 283-285 of the New Orleans Convention Center, New Orleans, Louisiana
Primary Contact: Mary R Albert, Dartmouth College
AGU meeting website: https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/meetingapp.cgi/Session/249098  

Each year the annual update of the IDP Long Range Science Plan is finalized in June to include recent input from the IDP Science Advisory Board (SAB), the IDP Working Groups, and the research community at large; the SAB prioritizes items within the section on Recommended Technology Investments.  In October 2025, the SAB revised the language in the June 2025 Long Range Science Plan on a priority item involving hot water drilling; it was revised so that it now reads:

• Describe/adapt the design and develop a cost estimate for the future build of a clean modular hot water drill (e.g. replicate the BAS modular drill for holes up to 3,000 m depth) that minimizes logistical footprint including fuel supply.

IDP engineers are currently working on this task. A paper on the BAS drill was published in 2020 by Makinson and others and can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/aog.2020.88. The updated IDP Long Range Science Plan can be downloaded from https://icedrill.org/long-range-science-plan. U.S. scientists who are interested in using a clean hot water drill to 3,000 m depth are invited to provide input to IDP on the draft IDP Science Requirements for a Deep Clean Hot Water Access Drill. Please send an email indicating your interest to Icedrill@Dartmouth.edu and we will follow up with you.

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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A virtual meeting of the Ice Core Working Group (ICWG) was held on April 8, 2025, to discuss updates to the Long Range Science Plan (LRSP) and other ICWG business. Discussions included updates from IDP and the NSF Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), ICWG community planning, updates to the LRSP, ice drilling technology development priorities for the LRSP, and member rotations. The agenda and presentations from the meeting are available on the IDP website.

The members of the ICWG are:

• Becky Alexander, Chair (University of Washington)
• Christo Buizert (Oregon State University)
• T.J. Fudge (University of Washington)
• Alex Michaud (The Ohio State University)
• Summer Burton Rupper (University of Utah)
• Sarah Shackleton (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
• Dom Winski (University of Maine)

A virtual meeting of the Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group (ESAWG) was held on April 9, 2025, to discuss updates to the Long Range Science Plan (LRSP) and other ESAWG business. Discussions included updates from IDP and the NSF Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), discussion about an ESAWG white paper, ESAWG priorities for IPY, and ice drilling technology development priorities for the LRSP. The agenda and presentations from the meeting are available on the IDP website.

The members of the ESAWG are:

• Ryan Venturelli, Chair (Colorado School of Mines)
• Jason Briner (SUNY Buffalo)
• Brent Christner (University of Florida)
• Britney Schmidt (Cornell University)
• Jeff Severinghaus (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
• Heidi Smith (Montana State University)
• Joseph Talghader (University of Minnesota)

The NSF Ice Drilling Program (IDP) convenes a Science Advisory Board (SAB) to form and update the Long Range Science Plan (LRSP) that addresses multiple aspects of ice core and other ice science and associated technology. The annual SAB meeting was held virtually on April 17, 2025. Topics included updates from IDP, the NSF Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), englacial and subglacial science updates, Englacial and Subglacial Access Working Group (ESAWG) plans for the future, SAB assessment of ESAWG community needs and IDP alignment, ice core science updates, Ice Core Working Group plans for the future, IDP personnel allocation and development priorities, and SAB prioritization of drilling technology development for the Long Range Science Plan. The agenda and presentations from the meeting are available on the IDP website.

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)

Drilling in ice without the use of a borehole fluid can be achieved to depths of 300-350 meters before risking borehole closure. However, the ice cores extracted from depths exceeding 150-180 meters often exhibit very poor core quality. IDP has largely found this to be true, except when drilling at the Allan Hills in Antarctica, a Blue Ice Area (BIA), where core quality deteriorates at depths as shallow as 50 meters. The exact reasons for this deterioration in core quality at shallower depths in BIAs compared to non-BIAs are not fully understood.

In IDP’s 2024 Long Range Science Plan, IDP was tasked with conducting an engineering feasibility study to evaluate and recommend long-term drilling approaches for retrieving high-quality ice cores down to a depth of 400 meters in BIAs. In a new report, IDP outlines several solutions proposed to improve core quality in BIAs, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each. The report also discusses how core quality is defined, the past performance of IDP’s shallow drills, and lessons learned from drilling in non-BIAs. For more information, read the Blue Ice Core Quality Feasibility Study.

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The Town Hall on Scientific Drilling in the Polar Regions was organized and led by IDP on December 11, 2024, at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in Washington, D.C. Introductory remarks by NSF Program Manager Mike Jackson emphasized the need to plan for logistically light endeavors now and going into the future. The audience of 48 then heard brief updates on current and upcoming endeavors presented by Mary Albert for the NSF Ice Drilling Program, Peter Neff for NSF COLDEX, Joerg Schaefer for GreenDrill, Ursula Jongebloed for ICECReW (Ice Core Early Career Researchers Workshop), Eric Steig for Hercules Dome, and John Goodge for RAID (Rapid Access Ice Drill). The presentations from the town hall are available to download.

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.

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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.