Drilling operations for the South Pole Ice Core (SPICEcore) project

Abstract

Over the course of the 2014/15 and 2015/16 austral summer seasons, the South Pole Ice Core project recovered a 1751 m deep ice core at the South Pole. This core provided a high-resolution record of paleoclimate conditions in East Antarctica during the Holocene and late Pleistocene. The drilling and core processing were completed using the new US Intermediate Depth Drill system, which was designed and built by the US Ice Drilling Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In this paper, we present and discuss the setup, operation, and performance of the drill system.

Core handling, transportation and processing for the South Pole ice core (SPICEcore) project

“…For details of the IDD, see Johnson and others (2014). For details of the SPICEcore drilling operation, see Johnson and others (2020). …”

“…After each drill run, the IDD's tower and sonde were tilted horizontally to allow for the removal of the core barrel (Johnson and others, 2020). The core barrel, containing the run of ice core, was then transferred laterally by hand to the push-out table of the core handling line.…”

“…The following is an overview of each field season's activities. Details of the drilling operation and the IDD design have been described previously (Johnson and others, 2014; Johnson and others, 2020).…”

“…The primary goal of the on-site core handling was to remove as much of the ESTISOL TM 140 drill fluid from the core as possible, conduct precise initial length and depth logging, document any notable ice characteristics, cut the 2 m long drill runs of ice into 1 m long sections, and safely prepare the ice for transport back to the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF) in Denver, Colorado, USA, for repeated length and depth logging and subsequent sample cutting. Details of the drilling operation are described in Johnson and others (2020). Here, we discuss the methods used for handling and logging the drilled ice at the South Pole, the procedures used to retrograde the ice back to the NSF-ICF, and the methods used for processing and sampling the ice once on-site at the NSF-ICF.…”

Continuous-Flow Analysis of δ17O, δ18O, and δD of H2O on an Ice Core from the South Pole

“…We obtained an ice core at 89.99°S, 98.16°W, approximately 2 km from the geographic South Pole, during the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 austral summers (Johnson et al, 2020;Souney et al, 2020). The core, "SPC14", was drilled to a depth of 1751 m, equivalent to an age of approximately 54 ka.…”