Saturday and Sunday 29th and 30th June 2024

End of EGRIP intermediate drilling season 2024

The cabin-Pistenbully is ‘opened’ on the snow hill for maintenance


The S10 drilling test with the intermediate drill in the white tent is now terminated. Many different components and configurations have been tested and tried out, the drill control box and software are fully integrated, and experience has been obtained with the reamer and drilling with liquid in the borehole. Now starts the big packing down exercise with sorting and documenting of (at least) a ton of equipment that will be shipped to different destinations. The density profile and water isotope sampling have been obtained for the entire S10 core. The measured ECM profile is, however, not consistent with the corresponding record from the main core. Despite our optimism last week, it seems impossible to match up the ECM records for the main core and that of S10. The reproducibility of the hand-held ECM seems low and there are spikes and patterns in the S10 ECM profile that we cannot match to the main core. Knut’s radar team is working on synchronizing their polarized radars so that they can measure the average ice fabric as a function of depth in both vertical and horizontal direction - a challenging task. On Saturday night we had Danish dinner: Flæskesteg (roast pork with pork belly), red and white cabbage, white and browned potatoes, brown gravy and cognac-ananas for dessert (JP, Nicholas, Iben and Anders S). This was followed by one of Anders KHs challenging quizzes, and later the disco ball got in motion.

What we did Saturday and Sunday:

  1. Drilling of S10 is now terminated at a logger’s depth of 82.89 m (2.67 m drilled)
  2. Continued maintenance of heavy vehicles
  3. Covered shallow hole S3 for next year
  4. Worked on synchronizing radars
  5. Took down outermost Weatherport. Four remaining.
  6. Enjoyed Danish dinner

Weather over the weekend: Partly overcast, some snowfall and some blue sky. Temperatures from -12 °C to -3 °C. Wind 3-14 kt from SW, N and E.

FL, Anders Svensson


The EGRIP S10 density profile compared to that of the GRIP S1991 shallow core

The EGRIP main core ECM (top) compared to those of EGRIP S10 obtained with the hand-held ECM (bottom). The three colors in the lower part represent three repeated measurements. The significant spike at 45 m depth in the upper curve is the Laki 1783 AD eruption.