August 4, 2022

Mercury pit sampling

Jeff in the Mercury pit.

Out in the clean snow area, Jeff and Dave are digging a clean pit for Mercury sampling. Great efforts are taken to keep the samples clean as the mercury content on the middle of the Greenland ice sheet is very low. Tomorrow they will continue digging to 4 m (perhaps 5 m) and take more samples. Each annual layer is around 30 cm so a 5 m core would reach 15 years back in time. The days of routine drilling are getting to an end. Tomorrow we will test the AWI drill , then the shorter Hans Tausen drill, filter the hole and give over the hole for optical fiber logging, borehole logging and later test of the CryoEGG. The EGRIP drill will be packed to be shipped out of camp August 14th to start it’s journey down to Dome C in Antarctica.

What we did today:

1. Five drill runs from Wednesday 7 pm to Thursday 7 pm. Logger’s depth at 7 pm: 2401.03 m. Logged core: 14.21 m.
2. Processing in science trench. Last bag packed: 4267: Production: 34.65 m.
3. Pit samples for mercury taken to a depth of 3 m.
4. Emptying and freeing the white garage tent.

Ad.1: After dinner the EGRIP deep drill was taken off the cable and the AWI deep drill was mounted to be tested tomorrow.

21 in camp (since July 26th)

Weather today: Full overcast in the morning clearing to blue sky and evening fog again. Wind 6-15 kn from SW. Temperatures between -11 and -7°C.

FL, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen