The Polar Ice-Core Storage Facility at USA CRREL

Since the inception of the U.S. polar ice-core drilling program, the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (USA CRREL) has been responsible for the central storage and curatorial activities of the ice cores recovered in the Office of Polar Programs/National Science Foundation (OPP/NSF) Arctic and Antarctic research programs (Table 1).

The main purpose of the central ice-core storage facility is to handle, process, catalog and distribute the ice cores drilled in the polar regions (Lange, 1973; Langway and Hansen, 1970; Langway et al., 1970; Ueda and Garfield, 1968 , 1969a, 1969b) to OPP-approved recipients for glaciological research. Under an agreement with OPP, the ice cores are stored at USA CRREL and in a commercial freezer facility; a technician handles and catalogs them. A core data bank is maintained for retrieval and information exchange, and starting with the Dye 3 ice core, is being computerized.

Between 1956 and 1968, USA CRREL had within its own physical plant the cold room capacity to store the ice cores. With the advent of core drilling through both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in 1966 and 1968, respectively, USA CRREL's available storage capacity was exceeded and a nearby commercial outlet was located.

Within the present USA CRREL cold room complex a 15 feet (4.6 m) by 25 feet (7.6 m) room, 16 feet (4.9 m) high, maintained at -34 ± 2°C is reserved solely for the storage of ice cores and other surface samples (Room 161, Fig. 1). Approximately 400 5-foot (1.5 m) core tubes from selected depths over the profiles of the various ice cores listed in Table 1 are stored in Room 161. These cores are used in USA CRREL's in-house ice-core analysis program as well as for out-of-house needs. Adjacent to and having the same dimensions as the storage room (Room 160, Fig. 2) is the cold laboratory (-10 ± 2°C) used for core processing, chemical cleaning of cores, various physical property studies (within a dust-free hood), and photography.