For our final drilling effort, I thought it best to camp at our moraine camp and make a 10 minute commute to the site for drilling, but there was considerable objection to this from our drillers, Terry and Bella. At the moment, all of our stuff was spread between six sites on the glacier, and managing this was becoming a considerable burden to Jason and I, and the thought of yet another move after this one, during the scramble of the take-out, was not pleasant. And as we would be here for several more months, we needed to consolidate and assess what else we needed brought in, as the early June take-out would be our only opportunity for this for some time. Our scientific productivity on parts of the project unrelated to drilling was also quite low, for similar reasons. But the idea of a com...

The next morning the drill was lowered to the same depth to continue drilling, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t just frozen slush preventing progress last night, but a rock. We lowered the borehole camera down again, and beneath the murky water it was clear that a rock was present at 130 meters depth. Given that this was exactly the depth that our radar measurements predicted, we assumed this to be the bottom. The second hole was finished! A day or two earlier, Jason and I had uncoiled the thermistor string that goes in this hole to straighten it out and help it go down the hole easier, so dropping that down became the next project. I attached a couple large weights to the end to help it drop smoothly, and we got it all the way down without incident. ...

Drilling progress slowed substantially from the breakneck speed of the previous days. The transition to thermal drill was also a transition to day-time drilling, requiring some time to adjust to the new schedule. But the thermal drill, unfortunately, seemed cranky at being redeployed, only making it another 30 centimeters yesterday before it refused to go deeper. This morning we ran the camera down the hole to see what the objection was. Though it was a little murky down there due to adding some ethanol and it mixing with the motor and cuttings, etc, it was clear that there was at least a small rock there, and that’s all it would take to stop thermal drill. So the plan today was to go back to the mechanical drill, this time during the day, taking advantage the heat of the day to keep the...

With over 150 meters of core sitting chilled in our freezer, it was time to start getting them back to civilization for eventual analysis. Moving this much ice, however, is no minor task. The basic plan was to have Dirk use his Beaver to shuttle loads directly to Fairbanks. Going directly to Fairbanks eliminates issues of the plane breaking down somewhere, but adds extra complication in that the fuel needed for the long flight eats into the available payload for ice. Given this and the uncertainties of snow conditions for taking off with heavy loads, we were planning on only 700-800 pounds per load, substantially less than what we were able to load on our put in flights. When packaged in their protected cardboard tubing, the total weight is about 2800 pounds, so we are looking at 4 flights...

As we returned from the wier late the night before, the drill team was waking up and preparing for a night of drilling. With the delays caused by hitting a rock and having to start a new hole, we were feeling the time pressure of completing the 3 holes that we planned (I had already dropped a fourth hole planned in my initial proposal). If we were to hit a rock on this 2nd attempt, there would be little chance to start a 3rd attempt and complete the final hole, which was over 200 meters deep. So at this point, there seemed to be no certainty that we would even complete 2 of the planned holes. Initially I had proposed using a hot water drill for these holes, which takes only a day or so to make a hole, so we began revisiting that option and checked whether such a drill could be flown up her...

After a night of repositioning the drill and coring about 20 meters, the drill crew slept during the day as Jason and I headed downglacier to explore the lower valley to prepare for a hydrological monitoring during summer. Most of the snow and ice that melts on the glacier during summer ends up at the stream which emerges from under the terminus. By studying the stream and its dynamics, we can potentially learn many things about how the glacier works. For example, we know from previous studies using GPS to measure ice velocity, that the glacier moves faster on hot sunny days than it does on cloudy days. The reason has something to do with meltwater reaching the bottom of the glacier and by studying the stream that comes out we can gain more clues about exactly how this increased meltwater ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 11, 2008 The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster than previously calculated according to a scientific paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Sebastian H. Mernild published recently in the journal “Hydrological Processes.” The study is based on the results of state-of-the-art modeling using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as satellite images and observations from on the ground in Greenland. Mernild and his team found that the total amount of Greenland Ice Sheet freshwater input into the North Atlantic Ocean expected from 2071 to 2100 will be more than double what is currently observed. The current East Greenland Ice Sheet freshwater flux is 257 km3 per year from...

Adam Soule from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution talks about his volcano research and how Antarctica is sensitive to climate change. As a volcanologist, he will study the lava flows of the past, an important process in an actively evolving planet such as Earth. The products of volcanic eruptions cover more than 2/3's of the Earth's surface and are primary means for transferring heat and mass from the Earth's interior.

Mark Kurz from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution discusses how he can find out the ages of rocks in Antarctica to discover when ice sheets and glaciers advanced and retreated on the icy continent. That knowledge, in turn, helps scientists learn more about how and why Earth's climate changed in the past, providing clues to determine how humans are affecting Earth's climate today, and the impacts climate change will have on humans in the future.

Oceanographer Mary-Louise Timmermans discusses the importance of research to determine how much the Arctic's climate is changing.