WAISCORES

The U.S. ice core research community is proposing a deep ice coring program in West Antarctica (WAISCORES) to develop a unique series of interrelated climate, ice dynamics, and biologic records focused on understanding interactions among global earth systems. This program will collect a deep ice core from the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) ice flow divide and integrate approximately 15 separate but synergistic projects to analyze the ice and interpret the records. The most significant characteristic of the WAIS Divide program will be the development of climate records with an absolute annual-layer-counted chronology for the most recent 40,000 years or so. The records will also extend at lower temporal resolution to at least 100,000 years before present. These records will enable comparison of environmental conditions between the northern and southern hemispheres, and study of greenhouse gas concentrations in the paleoatmosphere, with a greater level of detail than previously possible.

To support WAISCORES, ICDS is designing and building a new Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill to obtain high quality ice cores continuously from the surface to a depth of at least 3,800 meters. The DISC drill system is planned also to be capable of collecting replicate cores from depth intervals of special interest. Other science requirements include the ability to core ice at the pressure melting point, to minimize the number of core fragments, and to determine the core orientation. Another desired, but not required, science requirement is the ability to core the bedrock.

The DISC drill is currently being designed by a team consisting of Project Manager Alex Shturmakov and engineers Grant Emmel, Michael Gerasimoff, Bill Mason, and Bruce Koci; construction will begin soon. A field test in Greenland in the spring/summer of 2005 is planned, leading to an expected first deployment at the WAIS Divide site in 2006-07.