Hot-Water Ice Drills

Hot-water drills provide fastest penetration in glaciers and, nowadays, are actively used for the observation of ocean cavities under ice shelves, the retrieval of sub-ice seabed samples, the study of internal ice structures, video imaging, temperature logging, measurements of deformation within ice, the determination of basal sliding velocity, clean accessing to subglacial lakes. During drilling, hot water is pumped at high pressure through a drill hose to a nozzle that jets hot water to melt the ice. The water from the nozzle uses the melted hole as the return conduit and then, at the surface, it usually reuses by the hot-water drill.