Fwd: [graffis-l] ANTARCTIC GEOLOGICAL DRILLING A SUCCESS

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Antarctic Geological Drilling Program has

exceeded all expectations

Posted by: " Mark Graffis "

mgraffis

mgraffis

 

Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:54 am (PST)

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/26042

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Published November 28, 2007 08:38 AM Antarctic Geological Drilling Program has exceeded all expectations One week ago (Nov. 21), the drilling team passed the 1,000-meter mark

in rock core pulled from beneath the sea floor in McMurdo Sound, and with

a remarkable recovery rate of more than 98 percent. The end of drilling

is scheduled for this weekend, and only a few tens of meters of core

remain to be recovered for an expected final total of more than 1,100

meters (3,600 feet). It's the second-deepest rock core drilled in

Antarctica, surpassed only by the 1,285 meters (more than 4,215 feet)

recovered by last year's ANDRILL effort, the McMurdo Ice Shelf Project. As the job nears completion for the Southern McMurdo Sound Project

drillers, the co-chief scientists, David Harwood of the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln and Fabio Florindo of Italy's National Institute of

Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, said they couldn't be more pleased

with the results. They said the efforts of the program's nearly 80

scientists, drillers, engineers, technicians, students and educators in

Antarctica, with the operations and logistics support provided by

Antarctica New Zealand, have given the world's scientists more than a

kilometer of pristine rock core that records the history of climate and

glacial fluctuations in Antarctica over the past 20 million years. " It's everything we hoped for, " Harwood said. " Combine

the drill hole we recovered last year with this one, from a time period

right below it, and it's more than 2 kilometers (1 1/4 miles) of

geological history. It's phenomenal what we've recovered. There's a lot

of diversity in the core, indeed more than we can digest right now. It

will take some time to fully resolve the paleoenvironmental and dynamic

paleoclimate information in the core. " The goal of this drilling project was sediment core retrieval from

the middle Miocene Epoch when, for an extended period, Earth was warmer

than today. Florindo and Harwood said they are especially pleased to have

recovered such high-quality core from this target period. " We now have a more complete core record from the middle Miocene

and a step into a colder period of time, and that was one of our key

targets, " Florindo said. " It will tell an important story when

we put together our recovery with the record of last season. This is

exciting science and it will echo loudly in the scientific

community. " The middle Miocene has long been held as one of the fundamental time

intervals in development of the modern Antarctic ice sheets. It

encompassed a change from a warm climate optimum approximately 17 million

years ago to the onset of major cooling approximately 14 million years

ago, and the formation of a quasi-permanent ice sheet on East Antarctica.

Florindo and Harwood said fossils and sediments deposited during this

year's ANDRILL target interval suggest the persistence of

warmer-than-present conditions over an extended period of the middle and

late Miocene when the western Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound resembled the

modern climate conditions of southernmost South America, southwestern New

Zealand, and southern Alaska, rather than the cold polar climate of

today. " Until now, most climatic interpretations for this time period

has been based on measurement of oxygen isotopes in the deep sea, far

from Antarctica, " Harwood said. " The cores we've recovered will

give us a high resolution history of paleoclimate change directly from

the Antarctic continent. " The sediment cores reflect deposition close to or beneath grounded

glaciers, alternating with fine-grained sediments, which provide clear

evidence for ice advance and substantial retreat during main climate

transitions, Florindo and Harwood said. They said programs like ANDRILL

are extremely important because of the uncertainties about the future

behavior of Antarctic ice sheets. This stratigraphic record will be used

to determine the behavior of ancient ice sheets, and to better understand

the factors driving past ice sheet, ice shelf and sea-ice growth and

decay. This new knowledge will enhance our understanding of Antarctica's

potential responses to future global climate changes.

After a seven-week setup period by Antarctica New Zealand during late

winter in the Southern Hemisphere, drilling began Oct. 9 and continued

until last week, with the drillers recovering 25 to 70 meters of core

each day. There was only one major interruption, occurring in early

November when sand and water flowed into the drill hole, but Harwood said

the drill team " did an awesome job " of fixing the problem. Following the planned drilling stoppage at the end of last week,

scientists lowered a variety of scientific instruments into the deep

drill hole over several days to get a better understanding of the

physical properties of the geologic layers under pressure and to obtain

an acoustic image of the inside of the borehole. Drilling resumed this

week and will continue until probably Sunday to recover about 100 meters

of additional core. The first stop for each core section after recovery is the Crary

Science and Engineering Center, operated by the U.S. National Science

Foundation at McMurdo Station. After preliminary examination by on-ice

scientists, the cores are shipped to Florida State University's Antarctic

Marine Geology Research Facility in Tallahassee for storage and long-term

study. ### ANDRILL is a multinational collaboration comprised of scientists,

students and educators from the four partner nations (Germany, Italy, New

Zealand and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the

Antarctic continental margin. ANDRILL is one of about 220 projects

endorsed by the fourth International Polar Year, 2007-2009, one of the

largest collaborative science programs ever attempted. For more

information, visit http://andrill.org. Funding support for ANDRILL comes from the U.S National Science

Foundation, New Zealand Foundation of Research, Science, and Technology,

Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund, Antarctica New Zealand, the

Italian National Program for Research in Antarctica, the German Science

Foundation and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

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I3At 01:16 PM 11/28/07, you wrote:

Antarctic Geological Drilling

Program has exceeded all expectations

Posted by: " Mark Graffis " mgraffis

mgraffis

Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:54 am (PST)

http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/26042

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Published November 28, 2007 08:38 AM

Antarctic Geological Drilling Program has exceeded all expectations

One week ago (Nov. 21), the drilling team passed the 1,000-meter mark in

rock core pulled from beneath the sea floor in McMurdo Sound, and with a

remarkable recovery rate of more than 98 percent. The end of drilling is

scheduled for this weekend, and only a few tens of meters of core remain

to be recovered for an expected final total of more than 1,100 meters

(3,600 feet). It's the second-deepest rock core drilled in Antarctica,

surpassed only by the 1,285 meters (more than 4,215 feet) recovered by

last year's ANDRILL effort, the McMurdo Ice Shelf Project.

As the job nears completion for the Southern McMurdo Sound Project

drillers, the co-chief scientists, David Harwood of the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln and Fabio Florindo of Italy's National Institute of

Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, said they couldn't be more pleased

with the results. They said the efforts of the program's nearly 80

scientists, drillers, engineers, technicians, students and educators in

Antarctica, with the operations and logistics support provided by

Antarctica New Zealand, have given the world's scientists more than a

kilometer of pristine rock core that records the history of climate and

glacial fluctuations in Antarctica over the past 20 million years.

 

" It's everything we hoped for, " Harwood said. " Combine the

drill hole we recovered last year with this one, from a time period right

below it, and it's more than 2 kilometers (1 1/4 miles) of geological

history. It's phenomenal what we've recovered. There's a lot of diversity

in the core, indeed more than we can digest right now. It will take some

time to fully resolve the paleoenvironmental and dynamic paleoclimate

information in the core. "

The goal of this drilling project was sediment core retrieval from the

middle Miocene Epoch when, for an extended period, Earth was warmer than

today. Florindo and Harwood said they are especially pleased to have

recovered such high-quality core from this target period.

" We now have a more complete core record from the middle Miocene and

a step into a colder period of time, and that was one of our key

targets, " Florindo said. " It will tell an important story when

we put together our recovery with the record of last season. This is

exciting science and it will echo loudly in the scientific

community. "

The middle Miocene has long been held as one of the fundamental time

intervals in development of the modern Antarctic ice sheets. It

encompassed a change from a warm climate optimum approximately 17 million

years ago to the onset of major cooling approximately 14 million years

ago, and the formation of a quasi-permanent ice sheet on East Antarctica.

Florindo and Harwood said fossils and sediments deposited during this

year's ANDRILL target interval suggest the persistence of

warmer-than-present conditions over an extended period of the middle and

late Miocene when the western Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound resembled the

modern climate conditions of southernmost South America, southwestern New

Zealand, and southern Alaska, rather than the cold polar climate of

today.

" Until now, most climatic interpretations for this time period has

been based on measurement of oxygen isotopes in the deep sea, far from

Antarctica, " Harwood said. " The cores we've recovered will give

us a high resolution history of paleoclimate change directly from the

Antarctic continent. "

The sediment cores reflect deposition close to or beneath grounded

glaciers, alternating with fine-grained sediments, which provide clear

evidence for ice advance and substantial retreat during main climate

transitions, Florindo and Harwood said. They said programs like ANDRILL

are extremely important because of the uncertainties about the future

behavior of Antarctic ice sheets. This stratigraphic record will be used

to determine the behavior of ancient ice sheets, and to better understand

the factors driving past ice sheet, ice shelf and sea-ice growth and

decay. This new knowledge will enhance our understanding of Antarctica's

potential responses to future global climate changes.

After a seven-week setup period by Antarctica New Zealand during late

winter in the Southern Hemisphere, drilling began Oct. 9 and continued

until last week, with the drillers recovering 25 to 70 meters of core

each day. There was only one major interruption, occurring in early

November when sand and water flowed into the drill hole, but Harwood said

the drill team " did an awesome job " of fixing the problem.

 

Following the planned drilling stoppage at the end of last week,

scientists lowered a variety of scientific instruments into the deep

drill hole over several days to get a better understanding of the

physical properties of the geologic layers under pressure and to obtain

an acoustic image of the inside of the borehole. Drilling resumed this

week and will continue until probably Sunday to recover about 100 meters

of additional core.

The first stop for each core section after recovery is the Crary Science

and Engineering Center, operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation

at McMurdo Station. After preliminary examination by on-ice scientists,

the cores are shipped to Florida State University's Antarctic Marine

Geology Research Facility in Tallahassee for storage and long-term study.

 

###

ANDRILL is a multinational collaboration comprised of scientists,

students and educators from the four partner nations (Germany, Italy, New

Zealand and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the

Antarctic continental margin. ANDRILL is one of about 220 projects

endorsed by the fourth International Polar Year, 2007-2009, one of the

largest collaborative science programs ever attempted. For more

information, visit

http://andrill.org.

 

Funding support for ANDRILL comes from the U.S National Science

Foundation, New Zealand Foundation of Research, Science, and Technology,

Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund, Antarctica New Zealand, the

Italian National Program for Research in Antarctica, the German Science

Foundation and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

Science.

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