Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2023/24
Situation Report #21, 17 December 2023
Preparing an empty IBC for the chips bags transport. Photo: O. Alemany. Credit: Alemany©PNRA/IPEV
Enjoying a nice Saturday evening. Photo J. Westhoff. Credit: Westhoff©PNRA/IPEV
Tamara using the Danish scraper. Photo: J. Westhoff. Credit: Westhoff©PNRA/IPEV
First ash layer of the season. Photo: Koldtoft. Credit: Koldtoft©PNRA/IPEV
Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Olivier Alemany (CNRS), Philippe Possenti (CNRS), Matthias Hüther (AWI), Remi Dallmayr (AWI), Gunther Lawer (AWI), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Andrea Ceinini (ENEA), Federico Scoto (CNR), Tamara Gerber (UCPH), Iben Koldtoft (UCPH), Julien Westhoff (UCPH), James Veale (BAS), Michaela Mühl (UNIB), Fortunat Joos (UNIB), and Inès Gay (IPEV)
Weather at LDC 5 pm: sunny and nice, T = -15°C, Wind = 1.6 m/s
No real big change on this Sunday in our activities. After a slow start this morning, drilling continues in shift with runs longer than 4 meters in length, and still with excellent core quality (apart one). We set up the second drill head with sharper cutters, and our run were more stable in current consumption.
Meanwhile we are still processing the last year cores.
What we did today at LDC:
- we continued to drill in shifts;
- we are now processing the ice from 222m to 608m, which is left unprocessed from last year. We finished another 29 m in shifts, reaching 451m depth;
- we tested the Danish scraper (for collecting snow for water isotope measurements);
- we tried the IGE’s dry shallow drill;
- we continued BAS geophysical survey side project.
End of day statistics at 19h30:
- Driller’s depth: 975.24 m;
- in between 10h this morning and 19h we made 5 runs (drillers delta depth: 4.6, 4.09, 4.48, 4.28, 4.48) for a total length of 21.79 meters (drillers delta depth) meters in 9 h;
- Logger’s depth: 977.97 m
- Current processing depth: 451 m; daily total: 29 m; season total: 429 m.
Olivier Alemany, Matthias Hüther, Julien Westhoff and Saverio Panichi. LDC, 17.12.2023