With the advent of laser spectroscopic methods, stable water isotope analysis of ice cores can now be performed in the field with minimal sample preparation, extremely low sample consumption, and high measurement precision. This development enables continuous assessment of ice core drilling progress through real-time water isotope profiles, offering significant advantages to deep ice core...
Hot water drilling provides rapid access to depth in ice. Sampling with annular hot water drill lances is possible but gives samples of variable quality (Engelhardt et al., 2000; Liu et al., 2019, 2021). Here we take different approach, bailing water from the hole to allow ice sampling from an air-filled hole. Two prototype methods of ice sampling are proposed for use in dry, hot water-drilled...
Shallow ice cores are crucial for reconstructing climate variability over the past several hundred to thousands of years, as well as for understanding the underlying mechanisms driving these changes. To date, the Chinese inland Antarctic expedition team has recovered more than ten shallow ice cores (> ~50 m in depth) along the transect from the coastal Zhongshan Station to Dome A, the summit...
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Ice Drilling Program (IDP) has encountered challenges in consistently recovering high-quality ice cores with dry electromechanical drills from shallow depths in Blue Ice Areas (BIAs), such as the Allan Hills in Antarctica. These difficulties are attributed to elevated internal stresses within the ice sheet and the frequent presence of rocks and...
Abstract: Antarctic ice sheets contain important records of climate change, atmospheric environment evolution, and biological and chemical processes. Studying these records helps us understand the past, present, and future of the Earth system, and obtaining ice core samples is the prerequisite of these studies. During ice core drilling, the cutters directly contact and break the circular ice...
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) deep drill is an electromechanical cable-suspended drill based on the US IDP FORO3000 drill design, a derivative of the Hans Tausen family of drills. The drill system has been developed for the Million Year Ice Core (MYIC) Project and was built in-house at the AAD with collaborative input from US Ice Drilling Program and the University of Grenoble and...
Techniques for ice core drilling on polar ice sheets and high-altitude ice caps have been developed and improved by many research groups over the past 60 years, as a means of retrieving records of past climate change and atmospheric composition. Less attention has been given to the natural archives that may be present in temperate ice caps and their physical properties are still poorly...
A new subglacial coring drill called the Basal Access Subglacial Exploration (BASE) Drill is currently under development at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Ice Drilling Program (IDP). Based on the proven design of the IDP Agile Sub-Ice Geological (ASIG) Drill, the new drill system is designed to quickly penetrate overlying ice and sediment to reach bedrock at up to 200 m total...
In the western part of the Vatnajökull ice cap, two subglacial geothermal systems cause steady melting of the overlying ice and collection of meltwater in subglacial lakes that empty out in jökulhlaups (glacier lake outburst floods) every 2 years (on average). Release of the meltwater, which contains a geothermal fluid component, leads to subsidence of the surface and the formation of 50–150 m...
In the field of polar research, acquiring bedrock samples from beneath polar ice sheets is of great significance for reconstructing ancient climates, exploring ancient life, and studying subglacial geological structures, among other related applications. However, subglacial bedrock core drilling is extremely challenging, and to date, there have been few successful cases, with insufficient...
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Ice Drilling Program (IDP) provides specialized ice and sub-ice drilling technology and operational support to enable NSF-funded scientific discoveries about earth’s past climate and the environment. As part of its multifaceted inventory of drills, IDP maintains the ice adapted Winkie and Agile Sub-Ice Geological (ASIG) drills to enable access to the...
Antarctic subglacial sediments preserve important geological and ecological records, including paleoenvironmental changes, glacier melting processes, and subglacial ecosystem dynamics. However, current coring technology is difficult to cope with heterogeneous formation sediments containing hard particles (such as gravel, granite pebbles) and viscous clay matrix, which have high shear strength...
Searching for evidence of ancient climates and extant life in icy planetary environments will require robust hardware and software to obtain surface and subsurface samples. Ice drills like The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT), a 1 meter rotary percussive drill manufactured by Honeybee Robotics, are uniquely suited hardware for obtaining cores and samples, but...
Thermal melt probe, which utilizes electric heating power to melt ice, is a clean and lightweight tool for ice drilling in polar regions. However, uneven heating power and drilling load on the thermal head often lead to deviations of the melting trajectory, making it difficult to maintain vertical drilling and reach the target depth. To address this issue, this study proposed a pendulum-type...
Autonomous access to ice layers up to 100 meters in depth is increasingly important for a range of scientific applications, including glaciology, climate studies, and astrophysics. Compact melting probes represent a promising solution for the deployment of sensors in and beneath the ice, particularly in remote environments where conventional drilling is logistically challenging.
The system...
A compact ice borehole logger has been developed at the Niels Bohr Institute to reliably measure temperature, pressure, and orientation with minimal logistical demands. Designed for use with a simple line and winch, the lightweight device enables high-fidelity data collection at remote coring sites without requiring complex infrastructure. The first iteration, the minilogger, integrates the...
Quantifying the depth-dependent rheology of Antarctic ice is essential for understanding ice sheet dynamics and their response to environmental forcing. In recent decades, borehole-based deformation measurements—including inclinometers, tiltmeters, optical strainmeters, and borehole imaging—have provided new insights into the internal mechanics of ice sheets and glaciers across Greenland,...
operations were conducted, revealing significant borehole constriction at the bottom section under drilling fluid-free conditions. These observations provide valuable scientific guidance for drilling engineering practices.
This project focuses on the deep ice core borehole drilled during the 2023-2024 China-Russia joint Antarctic scientific expedition, utilizing a high-precision logging...
Accurate measurement of temperature within Antarctic ice holes is crucial for understanding the thermal state of ice sheets and subglacial environments, especially for the study of ice sheet dynamics, subglacial heat flux, and the broader Antarctic thermal environment. However, conventional temperature-measuring devices become inapplicable in ice boreholes due to extreme cold, high pressure,...
In hot-water ice drilling, the melting rate of the borehole wall during drilling operations and the freezing rate leading to borehole closure during standstill periods are critical parameters for evaluating drilling efficiency and operational safety. However, in-situ measurements of these parameters present significant challenges, including high costs, operational uncertainties and delay of...
Drilling hot-water holes in glaciers and deploying various sensors into the holes for observation represents a direct approach to acquire internal parameters of glaciers. Since the 1960s, a large number of observations on internal ice temperature, subglacial water pressure, ice flow velocity, and borehole photography have been carried out globally for polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers,...
Hot-water drilling is the fastest method of drilling through ice, with penetration rates typically ranging from 40 to 60 m/h, and in some cases reaching as high as 200 m/h. Currently, hot-water drilling is being actively used to observe ocean cavities beneath ice shelves, study internal ice structures, measure temperature and deformation within the ice, and clean access subglacial lakes. In...
The Independent Firn Drill (IFD) was developed to improve firn hole quality and operational efficiency of the drilling campaign for the IceCube Project. The IFD is used to create an initial 60 cm borehole through the firn layer at the South Pole to a depth of approximately 40 m, where melt water begins to pool in the borehole. At that point, the deep hot water drill (Enhanced Hot Water Drill,...
Warmer summers increase the glaciers’s melting and enhance meltwater infiltration into porous firn. Additionally, increased temperatures of the glacier’s active layer reduce its refreezing capacity. The prolonged melt seasons associated with ongoing global air temperature rise promote the formation of perennial firn aquifers, which serve as short- and long-term water storage within glaciers....
In recent years the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Ice Drilling Program (IDP) has dry drilled numerous shallow cores in areas with rocky and silty ice. This leads to significant degradation in core quality as the drilling conditions rapidly dull hardened steel cutters, often within the first few meters. In the past, the only remedy was to have drillers spend hours each day sharpening...
All deep wireline drills must deliver power to the cutting face and sense forces on the sonde to avoid cable knots. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Ice Drilling Program (IDP) is looking to inform future development with the best approaches to solving these problems in the context of the Foro series drills. The goal is to maintain safety, performance, and durability with a design...
A drill tent, utilizing inflatable beams, has been procured and used for the Mueller Ice Core Project in the Canadian arctic during the summer of 2025. We present the specifications of the tent as well as the results and our reactions during the field season.
The logistics required to support ice drilling camps are challenging and expensive so reducing the logistical burden is an...
Since 2016, the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI) has operated a tractor traverse system designed to transport scientific personnel, research equipment, and supplies from Jang Bogo Station to the interior of the Antarctic Plateau, enabling round-trip traverses of up to 1,500 km. In 2020, KOPRI launched the Clean Access to Subglacial lake Cheongsuk in Antarctica (CASCA) project, aiming to...
The exploration of subglacial lakes plays a pivotal role in deciphering the life characteristics within extreme environments. Currently, the drilling techniques used mainly include hot water drilling technology, deep ice core drilling technology, and RECoverable Autonomous Sonde（RECAS）. Compared to the other methods, RECAS offers distinct advantages for subglacial lake detection: compact...
The project “Interglacial Collapse of Ice Sheets revealed by Subglacial Drilling of Bedrock” (INCISED) seeks to recover geological samples from beneath the ice sheet for cosmogenic isotope analysis. This ERC Advanced Grant funded project (PI Mike Bentley, Durham) aims to determine the extent of the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Last Interglacial period (approximately 125...
