The Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP) was a decade-long project to drill
ice core
An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet or a high mountain glacier. Since the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper ones, and an ice core contains ...
s in
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is ...
that involved
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophica ...
s and funding agencies from
Denmark
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, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
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, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
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, establishe ...
,
Switzerland and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
. Besides the U.S.
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
(NSF), funding was provided by the
Swiss National Science Foundation
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, German: ''Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung'', SNF; French: ''Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique'', FNS; Italian: ''Fondo nazionale svizzero ...
and the Danish Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland. The ice cores provide a
proxy
Proxy may refer to:
* Proxy or agent (law), a substitute authorized to act for another entity or a document which authorizes the agent so to act
* Proxy (climate), a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest in climate re ...
archive of temperature and atmospheric constituents that help to understand past climate variations.
The preliminary GISP
field work
Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduc ...
started in 1971 at
Dye 3
Dye 3 is an ice core site and previously part of the DYE section of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, located at (, 2480 masl) in Greenland. As a DEW line base, it was disbanded in years 1990/1991.
An ice core is a core sample from the accumu ...
(), where a 372 meter deep, 10.2 cm diameter core was recovered. After this, annual field expeditions were carried out to drill intermediate depth cores at various locations on the
ice sheet
In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at ...
. The first was a 398 m core at Milcent and another was a 405 m core at the Crete station in 1974. After working out various
logistical
Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...
and
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
problems related to the development of a more sophisticated
drilling rig
A drilling rig is an integrated system that Drilling, drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for piling and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to ...
, drilling to
bedrock
In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material ( regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet.
Definition
Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of be ...
at Dye 3 began in the summer of 1979 using a new Danish electro-mechanical ice drill. In the first year, an 18 cm diameter hole was drilled and cased to a depth of 80 m. Coring continued for two more seasons, and on August 10, 1981, bedrock was reached at a depth of 2037 m. The Dye 3 site was a compromise:
glaciologically, a higher site on the
ice divide An ice divide is the boundary on an ice sheet, ice cap or glacier separating opposing flow directions of ice, analogous to a water divide. Ice divides are important for geochronological investigations that use ice cores, since such coring is typi ...
with smooth bedrock would have been better; logistically, such a site would have been too remote.
GISP drilling operations
GISP2
There was a follow-up U.S. GISP2 project, which drilled at a glaciologically better location on the summit of the ice sheet. This hit bedrock (and drilled another 1.55 m into bedrock) on July 1, 1993 after five years of drilling, while
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...
an scientists produced a parallel core in the
GRIP
Grip(s) or The Grip may refer to:
Common uses
* Grip (job), a job in the film industry
* Grip strength, a measure of hand strength
Music
* Grip (percussion), a method for holding a drum stick or mallet
* ''The Grip'', a 1977 album by Arthur Bl ...
project. GISP2 produced an ice core 3053.44 meters in depth, the deepest ice core recovered in the world at the time.
The location of the GISP2 drilling was revisited annually during summer campaigns to investigate the post-depositional properties of gasses and aerosols in the
firn
__NOTOC__
Firn (; from Swiss German "last year's", cognate with ''before'') is partially compacted névé, a type of snow that has been left over from past seasons and has been recrystallized into a substance denser than névé. It is ice that ...
. Eventually, GISP2 and
Summit Camp
Summit Camp, also Summit Station, is a year-round staffed research station near the apex of the Greenland ice sheet. The station is located at above sea level. The population of the station is typically five in wintertime and reaches a maximu ...
became the site of a year-round NSF / NOAA climate observatory and research facility known as the Greenland Environmental Observatory or GEOSummit.
NSF's Summit Greenland Observatory
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The bulk of the GISP2 ice core is archived at the National Ice Core Laboratory
The National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF), known as the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) before 2018, is the primary repository for ice cores collected by the United States. The facility is located at the Denver Federal Cent ...
in Lakewood, Colorado
The City of Lakewood is the home rule municipality that is the most populous municipality in Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 155,984 at the 2020 U.S. Census making Lakewood the fifth most populous city in C ...
, United States.
See also
* Clair Patterson
Clair Cameron Patterson (June 2, 1922 – December 5, 1995) was an American geochemist. Born in Mitchellville, Iowa, Patterson graduated from Grinnell College. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and spent his entire pro ...
* Dye 3
Dye 3 is an ice core site and previously part of the DYE section of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line, located at (, 2480 masl) in Greenland. As a DEW line base, it was disbanded in years 1990/1991.
An ice core is a core sample from the accumu ...
* EPICA
Epica or EPICA may refer to:
* Epica (band)
Epica is a Dutch symphonic metal band, founded by guitarist and vocalist Mark Jansen after his departure from After Forever.
Formed as a symphonic metal band with gothic tendencies, later Epica ha ...
* North Greenland Ice Core Project
The drilling site of the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP or NorthGRIP) is near the center of Greenland (75.1 N, 42.32 W, 2917 m, ice thickness 3085). Drilling began in 1999 and was completed at bedrock in 2003. The cores are cylinders ...
(NGRIP)
References
Sources
*
*
* {{Cite book, title=Mechanical Ice Drilling Technology, last=Talalay, first=Pavel G., publisher=Springer, year=2016, isbn=978-7-116-09172-6, location=Beijing
External links
GISP
from the NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
World Data Center
The World Data Centre (WDC) system was created to archive and distribute data collected from the observational programmes of the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year by the International Council of Science (ICSU). The WDCs were funded and ma ...
for paleoclimatology
GISP2
Geochronological institutions and organizations
Arctic research
Climate of Greenland