News

 

Field and CPL Updates

2011 Core Processing Line

July 29, 2011
Update provided by Peter Neff
project update image
The main archive freezer at the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL). In this photo 2,800 meters of the WAIS Divide ice core are shown. Each silver tube contains 1 meter of ice. The main archive freezer is 55,000 cubic feet in size and is held at a temperature of -36 degrees Celcius. A second room for examination of ice cores, held at -25 degrees Celcius, is 12,000 cubic feet in size and is contiguous with the archive area. For more information about the NICL visit: http://icecores.org/
Credit: Peter Neff

Week 5, 150 meters. Week 6, 152 meters. Week 7, 154 meters (2,986 meters ending depth for the week)!! Nothing is stopping the CPL crew here at the ice core lab. It's been a long 7 weeks for those of us here continually, but this past week was a milestone. We just surpassed 1000 meters processed this summer, and will process ice 3000 meters deep on August 1st!

Kees Welten (UC Berkeley) joined us for most of the week, and provided everyone here with an update on his work looking at cosmogenic radionuclides (CRNs) in the WAIS Divide core. CRNs, mainly Beryllium-10 and Chlorine-36 have been used in ice core studies to aid in annual dating of the records, to interpret past variations in solar output, and explore fluctuations in the earth's geomagnetic field.

We look forward to our talk this Friday from Jim White (CU Boulder), a leader in water stable isotope studies and a member of the WAIS Divide ice core executive committee.

On to the next 150 meters!

Peter Neff
WAIS Divide SCO Representative, 2011 CPL