July 3, 2018

Drilling again

Drilling ice cores at EGRIP. Left: A core peaks out of the bottom of the deep drill. Right: Nan inspects a core in the loggers’ cabin after extracting it from the drill.

A beautiful day at EGRIP with sunshine, no wind and temperatures almost reaching the freezing point – on such a day the combination of radiation directly from sun and the reflected radiation from the surface makes everybody feel summer like!
In the drill trench here at EGRIP, the drilling restarted after the cleaning of the bore hole, and some 11 m of high quality core was produced. The processing line and the isotope CFA are all in a good mode with steady production, while the Physical Properties measurements experienced some difficulty with the large area scanning microscope. In the processing line we have now started the cutting of ice from the glacial period where temperatures in Greenland where some 20 ºC colder than present and precipitation less than half of what we have today.
At the RADIX site, drilling preparation continued today, but the casing hose would still not release itself from the bore hole. Tomorrow a further attempt will be made.

What we did today:

1. 11 meters of main core drilled, drillers depth 1309.14 m.
2. Logging of main core from 1310.23 m to 1321.26 m.
3. Processing of EGRIP main core in the science trench, final depth: 1259.50 m.
4. Measurements in isotope laboratory, final depth: 816.75 m.
5. Measurements in physical properties laboratory limited to c-axis measurements.
6. Water vapour sampling and measuring.
7. Japanese snow crystal and surface monitoring.
8. Preparing for drilling at RADIX site.

Weather: Sunny most of the day Tuesday, but getting more cloudy with light snow in the late evening. Temperature -14 ºC to -1 ºC. Light or no wind veering from varying directions.

FL, Bo Vinther