Little Dome C - Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Drilling Site (75.29917 °S, 122.44516 °E) – Season 2023/24
Situation Report #54, 19 January 2024
Last drilled core of the 2023/2024 Beyond EPICA season.Photo: T. Gerber. Credit: Gerber©PNRA/IPEV
Last lunch at Little Dome C for this season. Photo: J Westhoff. Credit: Westhoff©PNRA/IPEV
Personnel @LDC: Saverio Panichi (ENEA, Camp Leader), Matthias Hüther (AWI),Gunther Lawer (AWI), Johannes Lemburg (AWI), Andrea Ceinini (ENEA), Tamara Gerber (UCPH), Iben Koldtoft (UCPH), Julien Westhoff (UCPH), James Veale (BAS), and Inès Gay (IPEV)
Personnel @Concordia: Olivier Alemany (CNRS), Philippe Possenti (CNRS), Remi Dallmayr (AWI), Federico Scoto (CNR)
Personnel @MZS: Fortunat Joos (UNIB), Michaela Mühl (UNIB)
Weather at LDC 5 pm: sunny and some wind; no more weather data
We finished drilling just before midnight on January 18th. We reached a driller’s depth of 1836.18 m and a logger's depth of 1835.35 m. In total, we have drilled 1031.53 m (1026.88 m loggers length) this season in exactly six weeks (Dec. 8 to Jan 18).
Additionally, we processed 1367 m of ice cores in approx. seven weeks and all of these are on their way to Europe for further analysis.
The ice we have just drilled has an age of roughly 200,000 years.
After a great, fun, and mainly successful season, the last people will leave LDC tomorrow. We are very happy about everything we have achieved this season, from drilling, over processing, to 200 plus meters of shallow drilling, geophysical surveys, snow pit sampling, testing new 1m snow-corers, and much more. We have also trained new drillers, new loggers, and new ice core processors, trained people on the pistenbully, and in general camp logistics.
A big thank you goes out to the logistics teams at Concordia, Mario Zucchelli, Dumont d’Urville, Casey, and those outside Antarctica.
Have a great day and see you next season!
What we did today at LDC:
- Finished packing down camp.
End of day statistics at 12h00 and end of season statistics:
- Driller’s depth: 1836.18 m;
- we made 2 drilling runs between yesterday 19h30 and 00h00 today. The length of the cores was: 4.47, 4.48, (driller length), for a total of 8.95 meters.
- Logger’s depth: 1835.35 m.
- Current processing depth: 1695 m; daily total: 0 m; season total: 1367 m.
Olivier Alemany, Matthias Hüther, Julien Westhoff and Saverio Panichi. LDC, 19.01.2024