June 5, 2017

A good routine day in camp with lots of activity

Stocking food in cooks new freezer. Christian, Sarah, Lydia with Nicolai and Sune in the background.

Drillers are drilling and processors are processing and two warm laboratories are in operation – all in the snow caves. On the surface the weather stays fine, and today we pulled an extra heavy cable across to the trenches to stabilize the voltage when the drillers operate the winch or powerful pumps. People in the science trench are gaining confidence by practice. Samples are cut, some are measured on the spot and some are packed separately for shipment to Europe. Some measurements are non-destructive, like line-scanning which records all visible features in the core or the ECM that records the DC conductivity in the ice, and when conductivity goes up in certain layers, it often indicates a layer with sulphuric acid from a volcanic eruption in the past. Some volcanic eruptions are quite clear in ice core, e.g. the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland that killed a substantial fraction of the Icelandic population and caused poor harvests in Europe for several years after. Some speculate that starvation caused by this crop failure led to the French revolution; but that’s a different story.

What we did today:

1. Processing: 21.45 m or bags 260-298 (163.90 m).
2. Pulled 160 m extra heavy cable from trenches to dome and main generator through existing 100 m snow tunnel in one hour.
3. Drilling in two shifts. 22.48 m drilled until 19.00.
4. Two shift logging of ice cores. Logging depth: 304.93 m.
5. Excavating and organizing all cables around satellite disk and setting up ceilometer.
6. Work on electricals in science and drill trench.
7. Caterpillar maintained and brakes adjusted.
8. German snow sampling.
9. Japanese aerosol sampling and snow experiments.
10. Water vapour sampling, methane sampling, boundary layer and meteorology station working.

Weather today: Sunshine. Temp. -11°C to -23°C. Wind: 5-10 kt from SW. Visibility: To horizon.

FL, J.P. Steffensen

Core processing. Rasmus is operating the horizontal saw, with Iben doing ECM just behind and in the background Benjamin is preparing samples for the line scanner.