26 June 2010

Documenting and communicating NEEM

Many cooks don't spoil the broth
The number of cooks is rapidly increasing at NEEM.

Back in the early nineteen's professor Willi Dansgaard documented the GRIP ice core drilling project in his legendary movie ‘The Saga of the Ice'. It's a lot of fun to watch that movie up here in camp because many of the scenes could just as well have been shot at NEEM. The camp setup, the drilling, core processing and daily life was not that different 20 years ago.
Still, there are also differences: we do, for example, no longer smoke in the science trench (where ppb levels of impurities in the ice are measured). Camp communication with the outer world is now mainly by satellite phone rather than by HF radio and telex as in the last millennium.

This week, two outreach persons from the Niels Bohr Institute, Gertie Skaarup and Torben Andersen, are joining us to produce a documentary of life and science at NEEM 2010. They are lucky to be here just as we drill the Eemian ice. Outreach programs are of vital importance for public awareness and educational purposes, so the camp is supporting our visitors as much as possible without delaying daily work. We look very much forward to see the resulting documentary.

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and core logging Eemian ice. Drillers depth: 2235.67 m. Loggers depth:
    2253.95 m.
2. Processed deep ice cores to depth 2203.85 m.
3. CFA measurements. 17.6 m. Final depth: 1833.15 m.
4. Saturday night celebration in an Eemian spirit.

Weather: Clear blue sky. Temp. -8 °C to -4 °C, wind 2-8 knots from SSE.

Ad. 4: We had a lovely dinner prepared by a large number of cooks from many nations, directed and organized mostly by our fake Swedish Belgium participant. Thanks!

FL, Anders Svensson

 

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