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West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core
The U.S research community is conducting a deep ice coring project in West Antarctica for studies of climate, ice sheet history and cryobiology. This project is collecting a deep ice core from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) ice flow divide and integrating approximately 40 separate but synergistic projects to analyze the ice and interpret the records. On December 31, 2011 the project reached its final depth goal of 3,405 meters, recovering the longest U.S. ice core to date from the polar regions. Learn more about WAIS Divide.
LATEST NEWS
Antarctic Ice Core Contains Unrivaled Detail of Past Climate :: NSF Press Release
A team of U.S. ice-coring scientists and engineers in Antarctica, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have recovered from the ice sheet a record of past climate and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that extends back 68,000 years. More...
Copy that - WAIS Divide team drills historic replicate ice core in West Antarctica
A team of scientists and drilling engineers performed the Antarctic equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of the hat deep under the ice sheet in December. They retrieved a one-meter-long ice core from about 3,000 meters down a borehole drilled through the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). More...
Innovations in Ice Drilling Enable Abrupt Climate Change Discoveries
A revolutionary drilling system leads to the retrieval of additional ice for evidence of abrupt climate change from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. More...
WAIS Divide Camp Is Open for the 2012/13 Field Season
The season is off to a great start. The put-in occurred on October 26 after waiting only one day for favorable weather. This is the first time in many seasons there has been a deep field put-in before November 1. More...
Registration is Now Open for the 2012 Science Meeting
The 2012 WAIS Divide Ice Core science meeting will be held on September 11-12 (Tues-Weds) at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla, California. Registration is now open. More...
Repeat experiment - New replicate ice core system will target abrupt climate change events
Scientists have been extracting ice cores from Antarctica for the better part of 50 years. But no one has tried to do what a team of researchers and engineers propose at the end of this year... More...
FIELD & CPL UPDATES
February 4, 2013
The science field season at WAIS Divide, and the drilling operations for the project, has ended after a fabulous field season.
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January 28, 2013
Great news. The drill team has completed all the coring objectives for the season. Considering that making a deviation without blocking access to the lower part of the borehole had never been done before, this is a major achievement.
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ATTENTION SCIENTISTS
Investigators from the United States need to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to obtain ice samples or access the borehole. If you are planning on submitting a proposal to NSF, you must contact the WAIS Divide Science Coordination Office (SCO) before submitting your proposal and obtain a letter from the SCO stating that your proposal is consistent with the WAIS Divide operation plan. In order to initiate this process, investigators must submit a Sample Request Form to the SCO. Sample requests may take up to 6 weeks to process depending on the complexity of the request and other workloads.
If the SCO approves your Sample Request, the SCO will provide you with a Letter of Support stating that your proposal is consistent with the WAIS Divide operation plan. ** This Letter of Support needs to be submitted with your NSF proposal. **
For more information, please read this.
