June 3+4, 2023

A calm and sunny weekend

Modern arctic living Saturday night.

The night between Friday and Saturday the borehole was logged and the temperature in the bottom was measured to -5.77 deg C. Saturday filtering did not bring much to surface, so Sunday drilling was continued and two long cores were drilled. In the attached figure is shown how the age of the processed ice core is determined by matching up the NGRIP and EGRIP DEP profiles. The rather significant dip around 105 thousand years is nicely reproduced making us confident we have made the transition from GI-23 to GI-24. Sune Rasmussen has produced the other attached figure that shows the depth relationship between the NGRIP and EGRIP ice cores and demonstrating how the thinning of the annual layers in the EGRIP ice core gradually becomes more important compared to that of NGRIP.
Saturday night the wind vanished and for the first time it became possible to take the outdoor living room into use. Saturday night dinner was a full-scale German experience: Yannick made Kaspressknödel (a sort of fried pressed cheese dumpling – grandma’s recipe!), Nico baked Flammkuchen with four flavors (it’s not a pizza, but a German-French dish in that direction) and Barbara made her famous Eierlikörkuchen (a great layered cake not suited for minors). After dinner, it was still calm and despite the very full stomachs a kind of soccer match was played outside main dome with everybody grasping for breath. Sunday, it was still nice weather and there was time for a skidoo drive to the end of the world, ie to the end of the skiway lead in flags in the absolute wilderness. An experience not to be missed, once you have made it to the top of the ice sheet.

What we did during the weekend:

1. Logged borehole, filtered borehole, and drilled two long ice cores.
2. Logging depth: 2573.49 m. Processing depth: 2569.60 m.
3. Physical properties measurement 2566.3 m.
4. Tested version 2 of the acoustic drill liquid level setup in inclined trench.
5. Worked on setup for measuring gas loss during sample transport.
6. Cleaned entrances to trenches after snow drift.
7. Oil check for main generator Sunday morning.
8. Sunday excursion to the end of the World.

Weather: Mostly nice weather over the weekend. Temperatures -25°C to -10°C. Saturday wind up to 15 kt from NE, but almost no wind Saturday evening and Sunday.

FL, Anders Svensson

And there was a beautiful halo above it all.

Figure showing the DEP matching of the NGRIP and EGRIP ice cores that allows for transfer of te NGRIP time scale to the EGRIP ice core.

The depth-depth relation between the NGRIP and EGRIP ice cores. The EGRIP depth is shown in units of 55 cm long ‘bags’. Also indicated is the radar-predicted depth of EGRIP bedrock and the position of the Eemian period in the NGRIP ice core.