Speaker
Description
Beyond EPICA – oldest ice core drilling group (presented by Frank Wilhelms)
O. Alemany, S. Banfi,, C. Barbante, G. Bianchi Fasani, G. Boeckmann, B. Broy, D. Dahl-Jensen, R. Duphil, H. Fischer, S. Bo Hansen, M. Hüther, I. Koldtoft, R. Mulvaney, A. Patoir, L. Piard, T. Popp, P. Possenti, K. Poupon, J. Rix, B. Seth, J. Vaele, C. Venier, C. Wesche, J. Westhoff, F. Wilhelms
Beyond EPICA – oldest ice core is a joint response of twelve partners from ten European nations towards the IPICS oldest ice challenge with further support by a Horizon 2020 European Commission Research and Innovation Action. An extensive pre-site survey, suggesting an age of about one-and-a-half million years and a resolution of at least about ten thousand years per metre, identified a drill site at Little Dome C (LDC, 75.29917°S, 122.44516°E) 40 km south-west of the French-Italian Concordia station in accord with the objectives set out for an oldest ice drilling site.
During the 2019/20 field season we started the construction of a drilling camp at LDC and built a drill shelter and housing tents. During the 2021/22 field season the infrastructure was complemented by the installation of the drill area, a 120 m casing into the pilot hole and the core storage area.
For the up-coming seasons, we plan to drill to bedrock (2800 m) and to replicate the lowermost section, which is older than 700 kyr. The harsh environmental conditions due to high altitude and low night time temperatures limit the daily operable time and the length of the field season.
Besides the established EGRIP drill system, we will deploy newly built components with up to 4.5 m core barrel length, overworked details and new electronics, with up to about triple the power by rising the electric tension to 750 V in a shielded cable and communication over the cable with wireline modems at about 30 kBaud data rate. For the up to 13.8 m long drill, we extended the tower and opened the roof of the drill tent. The new components are compatible with the existing EGRIP equipment, which incorporates optimized redundancy and increases the reliability.
We will report on the installation of the drilling camp at LDC and the planned implementation of the drilling operation to bedrock during the upcoming field seasons.
