Ice Planet Exploration: Deepest Canadian Ice Core Has Reached Bedrock
An ambitious Canadian Flagship project has successfully reached its goal drilling a 613 m deep ice core from top to bedrock though the Müller ice cap on Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, Canada.
Led by the University of Manitoba, the project has brought together ice and climate researchers from across Canada in a joint project together with researchers from Denmark and Australia.
Field updates from Muller Ice Cap
During April and May the ice cores were drilled under harsh climate conditions. May 16th bedrock was reached after also recovering pebbles and sand from under the ice cap. The ice cores will be stored in the Canadian Ice Core Laboratory (CICL) at the University of Alberta.
Measurements from the 613 m deep Mueller ice core will provide knowledge on climate and the extent of the Arctic Ocean sea ice reaching more than 10,000 years back in time. In addition, we will learn if the ice cap contains ice from the vast ice sheet covering North America during the last ice age. The project will bring drilling technology to Canada, use novel methods to measure the ice and educate a new generation of climate researchers. The knowledge on past climate and sea ice extent will improve projections of future changes for the benefit to Inuit communities in Nunavut and northern Canada.
‘It has logistically been a challenging project, so I am so excited to successfully retrieve the ice core from Müller. Now we cannot wait to start the measurements on the ice cores’ says Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, University of Manitoba, Principal investigator of the project.
In addition to the deep ice core, Alison Criscitiello, Director of CICL, University of Alberta, and team have drilled three 70 m ice cores to study the last 200 years. “Such a remote site, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, will offer unprecedented insight into the long-range atmospheric transport of environmental contaminants to the far North – reconstructions of great importance both to science and to local communities.”
Upper picture field team 1 (Left to right: Emma, Grant, Dave, Sofia, Dorthe, Jaime, Shari, Alison, Etienne and Kevin) who setup camp and drilled the first 450m of the main core.
The camp has also supported studies of the greenhouse gases and mercury by pumping air out of the snow and firn to a depth of 60 m. Anais Orsi, University of British Columbia states ‘ This is the first time such measurements have been done on the Canadian ice caps and the results are looking very exciting’.
The deep ice core was drilled with drill equipment developed at the University of Copenhagen and chief driller Grant Boeckmann states: ’The newly developed drill equipment worked really well and it has been a pleasure to be on the remote and stunning Müller ice cap’.
The Muller ice core will also be studied for mercury. ‘The Muller project will help track the history and sources of mercury pollution in the Arctic, and improve projection on when the Arctic marine ecosystem might recover from mercury pollution under the Minamata Convention’, says Feiyue Wang, University of Manitoba.
We would like to thank Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP), the Eureka Weather Station and Kenn Borek Air for exceptional support during the field work.
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