Australia's Million Year Ice Core Project Completes Second Drilling Season

Australia's Million Year Ice Core (MYIC) project has concluded its second drilling season in Antarctica, extracting ice cores from a depth of 400.68 meters. The project, led by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), aims to retrieve ice cores that provide a continuous climate record extending back 1 to 2 million years, offering insights into past ice age cycles and greenhouse gas levels.

Project Overview and Objectives

The Million Year Ice Core (MYIC) project is an Australian-led initiative focused on recovering a deep ice core from the Antarctic ice sheet.

The primary goal is to obtain a climate archive spanning 1 to 2 million years, which is expected to provide information on how Earth's climate, including ice age cycles, temperatures, and greenhouse gas concentrations, has changed over deep time.

This data is intended to address questions regarding historical shifts in ice age cycles, inform climate modeling, and contribute to future climate predictions. Dr. Joel Pedro serves as the MYIC science lead.

Drilling Operations and Progress

The project's initial deep ice core extraction occurred at a depth of 151 meters, yielding a sample approximately one meter in length. This milestone followed seven years dedicated to the design, construction, testing, and commissioning of a custom drill system. A previous field season utilized a shallow drill to create a pilot hole and extract 150 meters of ice core, providing approximately 4,000 years of climate history.

During the recently concluded second drilling season at Dome C North, scientists advanced drilling to 400.68 meters.

The ice extracted from this depth dates back over 13,100 years, corresponding to the end of the last ice age.

Drilling operations commenced on Boxing Day, following a month-long setup period for the new deep drilling system. Two teams of four individuals, consisting of drillers and core processors, operated in eight-hour shifts to extract, clean, cut, and package one-meter ice core segments for transport to Australia.

Deep drilling operations are scheduled to continue until late January, at which point activities will pause due to extreme temperatures and colder conditions.

Drill Specifications and Field Site

The custom-designed drill, developed by the Australian Antarctic Division, measures 8.4 meters in length and is engineered to penetrate more than 3,000 meters into the ice sheet.

Its design adapted a Danish model for operating conditions in Antarctica, which include temperatures as low as -55°C and pressures up to 300 kilograms per square centimeter. A four-tonne winch is used for managing the deep ice core drill.

The MYIC project team operates at the Dome C North drilling site, situated 1200 kilometers inland from Australia's Casey research station and 3239 meters above sea level. Field teams began establishing the remote inland station in late November, setting up power and necessary infrastructure for drilling operations.

Logistics and Traverse

The second drilling season was facilitated by an early start to the traverse, which commenced on November 1. A 10-person traverse team completed the approximately 1200 km journey from Casey research station to Dome C North over 17 days.

The traverse transported 47 tonnes of fuel and 67 tonnes of cargo, with a total weight of 640 tonnes, marking it as the heaviest traverse undertaken by the project to date. Equipment had been pre-positioned to support the early start.

Scientific Research and Future Plans

In addition to core extraction, a geophysical survey was conducted during the season to map ice properties down to the 3000-meter bedrock. This survey aims to refine age estimates for the ice at various depths.

The collected ice cores are slated for further research in Hobart, Australia, where internal ice layers will be studied to understand ice flow, informing models used to determine the age of the ice.

The MYIC team is now preparing for a third drilling season. The objective for the next season is to drill beyond 1000 meters, aiming to reach deeper into the Pleistocene epoch and past ice ages.

Drilling to the base of the ice sheet is projected to occur over the next three Antarctic summer field seasons, with 1-2 million-year-old ice expected near the 3000-meter bedrock.