News

Talk about a road trip.

Three semi-trailer trucks, each pulling 20-foot-long refrigeration containers, rolled into Denver on March 15 after a 24-hr trip across the southwest corner of the country from Port Hueneme, Calif.

The cargo: ice. Lots of it - about 43 pallets' worth. But this isn't ice for some fancy cocktail party. The trucks from California had hauled Antarctic ice cores to the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Lakewood, Colo.

It was the final leg of a journey that had covered some 11,000 miles.

The Fall 2010 In-Depth Newsletter is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/

In the Fall 2010 issue:

• Ice Core Paleoclimate Records from Combatant Col, British Columbia
  • Peter Neff (University of Washington)
• Subglacial Antarctic Environments: The Other Deep Biosphere
  • Brent Christner (Louisiana State University)
• On the Line - Researchers spend summer in deep-freeze to slice and dice WAIS Divide ice core
  • Peter Rejcek (The Antarctic Sun)
• WAIS Divide Ice Core Update
• Upcoming Meetings, Ice Core Working Group Members, Currently Funded Projects

We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.

It's midsummer in Denver, and the city has been baking under a heat wave for a couple of months. But in one small corner of the sprawling Denver Federal Center campus in the nearby suburb of Lakewood, about a dozen people are bundled up in thickly insulated Carhartt jumpsuits, wool caps, scarves and gloves.

Congratulations to the NEEM team reaching the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet! Below is a message from Jim White regarding upcoming opportunities at NEEM. Please contact Jim directly if you have interest working on these upcoming samples. To learn more about NEEM, visit their website at http://neem.nbi.ku.dk/.

From Jim White:

Dear Colleagues,

The NEEM ice core in north-central Greenland has reached bedrock. NEEM is an international ice coring project co-funded by fourteen nations. The US, via NSF-OPP Arctic, is a major partner in the project.

Rock coring and basal ice sampling, including biological sampling, is scheduled to happen in 2012 at NEEM. It would be great to have US participation in this, and we are looking for US scientists who might have an interest in working on any aspect of the basal ice and/or the basal rock material.

If you are interested, please contact:

Jim White
email: james 'dot' white 'at' colorado.edu
phone: 303 492 7909

The Spring 2010 In-Depth Newsletter is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/

In the Spring 2010 issue:

• PolarTREC Teacher Joins Hunt for Old Ice in Antarctica
  • Jacquelyn Hams (PolarTREC Teacher)
• Eric Cravens: Farewell & Thanks!
• WAIS Divide Ice Core Images Now Available from AGDC
  • Rob Bauer (Antarctic Glaciological Data Center)
• WAIS Divide Ice Core Update
  • WAIS Divide Science Coordination Office
• Drilling for Old Ice
• NEEM Reaches Eemian and Approaches Bedrock
• Recently Funded Projects

We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.

As you should be aware, the NSF/USGS Interagency Agreement for the operation of the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) will be expiring October 31, 2010. The USGS has assured NSF that they will work with NSF to ensure a smooth transition and the current plan is to extend the Agreement into FY 2011 with NSF assuming full costs of operations in November of 2010. The immediate priority are some infrastructure upgrades to the facility which are moving forward. Also in the transition continuity of the NICL staff is a high priority.

NSF plans to put out a Dear Colleague letter soon for the operation of the NICL facility. NSF would like to use this opportunity to develop plans for the future management of science and facilities important to the cyrospheric research community. The Dear Colleague letter will give the opportunity to centralize cryospheric research projects along with the operation of the National Ice Core Laboratory.

We will forward the Dear Colleague to this mailing list when it is released.

The Fall 2009 In-Depth Newsletter is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/

In the Fall 2009 issue:

• National Science Foundation and U. S. Geological Survey Decision about Future NICL Management
• International Greenland Ice Coring Effort Sets New Drilling Record in 2009
  • Press Release 09-158, National Science Foundation
• Old Ice: Climate record from last 2.5 million years may sit at the surface of Allan Hills
  • Peter Rejcek, The Antarctic Sun
• WAIS Divide Ice Core Update
  • WAIS Divide Science Coordination Office
• Recently Funded Projects

We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.

At the WAIS Divide meeting this fall, Eric Steig and Eric Saltzman are planning a short pre-meeting (on September 30th) to initiate discussion of an important question:

Where do we want to drill the next deep U.S. ice core? Put another way: Where do we want to take the DISC drill after we are done with WAIS Divide?

They would very much appreciate input on this, and volunteers to give brief talks making the case for their favorite location to drill next.

So far, suggestions include Hercules Dome and South Pole but there are obviously many other places that might be considered.

Now is the time to start planning, if we don't want a long hiatus between completion of WAIS Divide and the next deep drilling site.

Please contact the organizers with input and ideas.

Eric Steig < steig 'at' ess 'dot' washington.edu>
Eric Saltzman <esaltzma 'at' uci 'dot' edu>

The Spring 2009 In-Depth Newsletter is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/

In the Spring 2009 issue:

• Digging for Ancient Air at South Pole
  • Todd Sowers (Penn State) and Murat Aydin (University of California-Irvine)
• "How Was Antarctica?"
  • Anais Orsi (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
• New Ice Drilling Agreements for NSF-Funded Research
  • Mary Albert, Charles Bentley, Mark Twickler (IDPO)
• WAIS Divide Season Two A Success
  • WAIS Divide Science Coordination Office
• NICL Use and Accessing Ice Cores
• Recently Funded Projects

We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.

The Fall 2008 In-Depth Newsletter is now available online at https://icecores.org/indepth/

In the Fall 2008 issue:

• Uncovering Denali
  • Eric Kelsey and Cameron Wake (University of New Hampshire)
• International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) Synthesis Workshop
  • Dan Dixon (University of Maine)
• Girls on Ice: Using "Immersion" to Teach "Fluency" in Science
  • Erin Pettit (University of Alaska)
• USGS Intends to Continue NICL Operations
  • Randy Schumann (USGS)
• Recently Funded Projects

We are interested in project stories and news from the ice coring community. Please contact us if you are interested in submitting a story or news item to In-Depth.