Basler arriving at EGRIP with Joe McConnell’s team.
May 23, 2022
Basler arriving at EGRIP with Joe McConnell’s team.
EGRIP is a camp setup for drilling a 2600 m deep ice core through the East Greenland Ice Stream. Such a project requires a multiyear camp with considerable infrastructure and personnel for ice drilling and ice core processing. In order to fully understand the ice core record, many different studies are conducted on the snow surface, in the air (with drones) and by radar surveys, and this weekend we received several groups of people who do these surface studies. Due to two cancelled summers because of COVID, the entire camp was buried under meters of snow, and we are in the middle of the process to bring camp back into shape. The underground caves, where the ice core drilling is done, need significant restructuring before drilling can begin and we hope this will happen some time in July. On top of all this, EGRIP camp and skiway also serve as a logistical hub for several science projects in the north-eastern section of the Greenland ice sheet. And today, we received a Basler aircraft with a U.S. group (Joe McConnell’s team) who will make an ice core drilling 280 km north of EGRIP, this has temporarily boosted the population by 13 to now 33 people in camp until the U.S. group leave in a few days.
What we did today:
Weather today: Mostly clear blue skies with some thin clouds. Temp. -19°C to -14°C. Wind: 4-15 kt from WSW. QNH 993 hPa. Visibility: Unrestricted.
FL, J.P. Steffensen