Processing the brittle ice

Brittle ice on fire in the line scanner. The internal breaks in the core are clearly visible.

As the ice core processing is progressing faster than the ice core drilling, the processing line yesterday shifted back to process some of the Holocene brittle ice that has been stored at NEEM since last year. This section of the ice core is full of breaks and cracks due to released air bubbles that were under high pressure in the ice.

The brittle ice covers several thousands of years of the Holocene period and special care is taken to process this ice in order to maintain as many continuous records as possible. The many breaks do, however, put limitations on some measurements, such as the CFA analysis that can only be performed on ice with no cracks. Therefore all breaks have to be removed before analysis and some sections will have to be skipped.

The records that are obtained will, however, be the first Greenland Holocene CFA profile obtained ever. It will be a very strong data set as it will describe many different climate proxies in sub-annual resolution. A valuable dataset that does require some patience from the ice core processors.

Drilling: 12.17 m, drillers depth: 2386.44 m.
Logging: 7.11 m, loggers depth: 2403.36 m.
Processing: bag 1233-1270 (20.90 m), 698.50 m.
CFA: bag 3622-3661 (22.00 m), 2013.55 m.

What we have done today:
1. Drilling and core logging ice.
2. Processed deep ice cores.
3. CFA measurements.
4. New artistic staircase to main Dome.

Weather: Clear blue sky, low winds from SE and temperatures -16 °C to -6 °C.

FL's Dorthe Dahl-Jensen and Anders Svensson