The history of early polar ice cores

Abstract

The scientific knowledge of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the subsequently derived Earth history, has been greatly increased during the past 50 years. Much of the new information was obtained from various studies made on a relatively small number of deep (300–400 m) and several very deep (some over 3000 m) ice cores, recovered from the inland regions of both ice sheets, by different national and international research teams. The beginning, development, and progress of deep polar ice core drillings and core studies is reviewed from the incipient pit study made by Ernst Sorge in 1930, through the trying efforts of three separate international core drilling projects mounted around 1950. The paper continues with a broad overview of the early role and achievements made by two related US Army Corps of Engineers research laboratories: the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment (SIPRE), and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), from the early-1950's to the late-1980's. International partnerships of CRREL with the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (1966), and the University of Bern, Switzerland (1962), established the foundation of polar ice core science.

Introduction

“Snowflakes fall to Earth and leave a message-----”

Henri Bader (1907–1998)

Modern ice core drilling technology, and the following ice core science studies, were initiated by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1950's, just before the International Geophysical Year (IGY) program began, under the formulation and leadership of Henri Bader, Chief Scientist of SIPRE, in association with his research Branch Chiefs, B. Lyle Hansen, James A. Bender, W. Keith Boyd, Robert W. Gerdel, Robert W. Waterhouse, William H. Parrott, and others. During 1956–1959, the full span of the IGY's, field work, SIPRE successfully recovered the first deep ice cores ever obtained, and suited for integrated scientific study, from both the inland regions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. In 1961, SIPRE united with the US Army Arctic Construction and Frost Effects Laboratory (ACFEL) to form one laboratory, the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), and Bader retired and joined the faculty at the University of Miami, FL. CRREL continued with the ice core research base established by SIPRE, and in 1966 and 1968, succeeded in obtaining the first very deep ice cores that penetrated the entire vertical dimensions of both the inland regions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Together, SIPRE and CRREL amassed nearly forty years of research experience and achievements in deep polar ice core drillings and core analyses on a large-scale, and established the fundamental drilling technology for retrieving deep ice cores for climatologic archives. At the beginning, and for more than a decade, SIPRE/CRREL was solely responsible for establishing, defining and developing the entire US ice core drilling research program. In addition, the US Army Corps of Engineers, 1ST Engineering Arctic Task Force (1st EATF) Lt. Col. Elmer F. Clark, Commanding Officer; Capt. Ray S. Hansen, Executive Officer, provided the complete field support required for SIPRE's research on inland Greenland during the pre-IGY, in 1956 and 1957. This included all aspects of logistics, air and surface transportation, communications, field camp construction, and living accommodations. The US Navy Air Development Squadron, VX-E 6; and the Navy's Seabee support component, performed similar logistical services in Antarctica during the 1957–1959 IGY period. The construction of Camp Century, Greenland, an experimental nuclear powered, beneath-the-snow-surface, year-round, 200-person living facility, was completed in 1959 by the Corps of Engineers, Polar Research and Development Center (PRDC), Col Robert J. Giesen, Commanding Officer. The Corps also fully supported CRREL in its first, post-IGY bedrock-drilling project at Camp Century, Greenland from 1960 to1966. Thereafter, the US Navy fully supported CRREL again at Byrd Station, Antarctica, in its first to bedrock-drilling project there from 1966 to 1968.

Around the mid-1960's, CRREL entered into strong international laboratory and field research collaborations with the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the University of Bern, Switzerland, as well as with other US and foreign universities and institutes. Dr. Chester Langway participated in and was responsible for developing the SIPRE/CRREL field and laboratory ice core research program; the core sample storage responsibilities; and the scientific redistribution of ice core samples for external studies, from 1957 to 1975 (Langway, 1958a, Langway and Hansen, 1970). During his last nine years at CRREL he also served as Chief, Snow and Ice Basic Research Branch. In 1975, Langway accepted a faculty position and Chairmanship of the Department of Geology at the University at Buffalo (State University of New York), where he continued his active ice core research activities; and with the agreement of CRREL and the authorization of the NSF, accepted the responsibility for the curatorship of all ice cores recovered by the US deep drilling program at the University at Buffalo, for the next 17 years.