Follow the Field Diary - Season 2023/24 and the drilling progress
Beyond EPICA returns to Antarctica: the third deep drilling season has just started
Credit: Panichi©PNRA/IPEV
While the sun starts rising again in Antarctica, the Beyond EPICA 23/24 team has started the third drilling season in Little Dome C. Just a few kilometers away from Concordia Station, the remote camp of LDC will host researchers and technicians from Europe involved in the third ice core drilling campaign of the international research project Beyond EPICA, coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the CNR (National Research Council of Italy).
By analyzing ice cores extracted from the deep ice in Antarctica, the project aims to obtain information dating back to 1.5 million years ago, regarding the evolution of temperature, the composition of the atmosphere, and the carbon cycle. A team of 16 people will work for two months in the middle of the Antarctic plateau, challenging extreme weather and time to reach the best results.
The half-century since the first deep ice core drilling at Camp Century, Greenland, has seen increased spatial coverage of polar ice cores, as well as extensive development in methods of ice sample extraction, analysis and interpretation. We invite contributions reporting the state-of-the-art in ice coring sciences. We particularly encourage submissions from early career researchers from across the broad international ice core science community.
This session is supported by the European DEEPICE training network for early career scientists.
Beyond EPICA: a storytelling - 11
Facing the next drilling campaign!
We are very proud of the results of the last Beyond EPICA season, although several difficulties presented a challenge. During the operations, the drill also gave some minor problems but our team quickly solved each situation. In just two months of work we managed to reach 808 meters deep in the Antarctic ice cap, bringing us several steps closer to our final goal: retrieve the oldest ice core. We are now facing the next drilling campaign: more ice cores will be retrieved and more adventure awaits our Beyond EPICA team!
⇒ Interview: Romilly Harris-Stuart, CNRS-LSCE
⇒ Interview: Robert Mulvaney, UKRI-BAS
⇒ Interview: Julien Westhoff, UCPH
⇒ Interview: Frank Whilelms, AWI
⇒ Interview: Markus Grimmer, UBERN
⇒ Interview: Florian Krauss, UBERN
⇒ Narrative voice: Jessica Marzaro, CNR-ISP
