It has been a busy week for COLDEX at Allan Hills! After an initial put-in team arrived at the site last Friday (Nov 17), camp structures were erected in between high winds and low temperatures with wind chills in the -50C range.

I can say with some authority that the majority of us were stunned by the level of information that can be gleaned from a careful study of the ice core record.

Earlier this year in June, a group of scientists of varying career stages from six different institutions arrived at National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), Lakewood, Colorado for two weeks. The goal? To unbox, unpack, process, and cut Antarctic ice cores drilled from the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area in 2022-2023 and earlier field seasons for a multitude of different measurements.

A team of eight people – camp manager, two ice core drillers, five scientists – spent nearly 6 weeks at the Allan Hills blue ice area from December 2022 into early January 2023. They recovered two ice cores. One is a large-diameter (9.5”) borehole to 96 m depth at a site where 2.7 million year old ice has been previously recovered.

All three COLDEX research teams have successfully completed their 2022-2023 field seasons.

The Elephant Moraine trip was a success, recovering a 9 meter ice core at this site where previous samples taken by Korean colleagues indicate ice dating to between 400,000 and 1,000,000 years old.