Deep ice-core drilling to 800 m at Dome A in East Antarctica

A deep ice core was drilled at Dome A, Antarctic Plateau, East Antarctica, which started with the installation of a casing in January 2012 and reached 800.8 m in January 2017. To date, a total of 337 successful ice-core drilling runs have been conducted, including 118 runs to drill the pilot hole. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of Glaciology
Main Authors: Zhengyi Hu, Guitao Shi, Pavel Talalay, Yuansheng Li, Xiaopeng Fan, Chunlei An, Nan Zhang, Chuanjin Li, Ke Liu, Jinhai Yu, Cheng Yang, Bing Li, Bowen Liu, Tianming Ma
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2021
Subjects:
Antarctica
Dome A
ice core
ice coring
ice engineering
ice-core drilling
Meteorology. Climatology
QC851-999
Antarctic
East Antarctica
Annals of Glaciology
Antarc*
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1017/aog.2021.2
https://doaj.org/article/dfc6e41445484cadb3414974fa4a770a
Description
Summary:A deep ice core was drilled at Dome A, Antarctic Plateau, East Antarctica, which started with the installation of a casing in January 2012 and reached 800.8 m in January 2017. To date, a total of 337 successful ice-core drilling runs have been conducted, including 118 runs to drill the pilot hole. The total drilling time was 52 days, of which eight days were required for drilling down and reaming the pilot hole, and 44 days for deep ice coring. The average penetration depths of individual runs were 1 and 3.1 m for the pilot hole drilling and deep ice coring, respectively. The quality of the ice cores was imperfect in the brittle zone (650−800 m). Some of the troubles encountered are discussed for reference, such as armoured cable knotting, screws falling into the hole bottom, and damaged parts, among others.

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