Spring 2007

The International Polar Year 2007–2008 will be the largest internationally coordinated research program in 50 years. It will be an intensive period of interdisciplinary science focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic.

WAIS Divide is a United States deep ice core project in West Antarctica funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the project is to collect a 3,400 meter deep ice core from the flow divide (similar to a watershed divide) in central West Antarctica in order to develop records for the last 100,000 years of: global climate, the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), and biological activity.

In March, 2004 the National Science Foundation supported a workshop proposal submitted by National Ice Core Laboratory-Science Management Office to gather the world’s premier ice core scientists, engineers and drillers to establish a formal plan for utilizing the strengths and expertise of each nation to promote future ice core projects and to develop focused research objectives.

The NEEM (North Eemian) project is a new, 3km long, deep ice core in northern Greenland. This ice core will help us understand past environments and climates, and by improving that understanding, better enable us to predict the conditions of future climates.

The International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) is a multi-national (20 nations), multi-disciplinary field research program focused on understanding the recent environmental history of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean through overland traverses of Antarctica.

A new ice coring partnership between the U.S. and Norway will enable scientific investigations along two overland traverses in East Antarctica: one going from the Norwegian Troll Station (72º S, 2º E) to the United States South Pole Station (90º S, 0º E) in 2007-2008; and a return traverse starting at South Pole Station and ending at Troll Station by a different route in 2008-2009.

Welcome to the 4th International Polar Year (IPY)! Over the next two years there will be intense focus on Polar research and several multi-institutional U.S ice coring projects will be ongoing during IPY. These include the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project, U.S. ITASE, a Norwegian/ U.S. scientific traverse in East Antarctica, and a new U.S.-European deep ice core in Greenland. Brief descriptions about these projects are included in this issue of In-Depth and we hope to follow up with longer articles on each project in upcoming issues.