A new large-diameter ice-core drill: the Blue Ice Drill

Abstract

The Blue Ice Drill (BID) is a large-diameter agile drill system designed by the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group of the University of Wisconsin–Madison to quickly core-clean 241 mm diameter ice samples from near-surface sites. It consists of a down-hole motor/gear reducer rotating a coring cutter and core barrel inside an outer barrel for efficient cuttings transport in solid ice. A variable-frequency drive and custom control box regulates electrical power to the drill. Torque reaction is accomplished on the surface via handles attached to a torsion stem. Core recovery is achieved with either core dogs in the sonde or with a separate core recovery tool. All down-hole tools are suspended on a collapsible tripod via ropes running on a capstan winch. The BID is operated by a minimum of two people and has been used successfully during two seasons of coring on a blue ice area of Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. An updated version of the drill system, BID-Deep, has been designed to recover cores to depths up to 200 m.

Spatial pattern of accumulation at Taylor Dome during Marine Isotope Stage 4: stratigraphic constraints from Taylor Glacier

“…An ice chronology was constructed for the new Taylor Glacier MIS 5-4 cores by matching variations in Ca 2+ , insoluble particle count, and δ 18 O ice to preexisting EPICA Dome C (EDC) dust (Lambert et al, 2008(Lambert et al, , 2012 and δ 18 O ice records synchronized to AICC 2012 ( Fig. S2).…”

“…S3 and Table 5). Ice tie points were chosen by manually matching variations in the Taylor Dome Ca 2+ record (i.e., Mayewski et al, 1996) to EDC dust (Lambert et al, 2012(Lambert et al, , 2008 on AICC 2012 ( Fig. S4 and Table 6).…”

Dust Transport to the Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, During the Last Interglacial

“…Drilling was performed with the Blue Ice Drill (Kuhl et al, 2014) provided by Ice Drilling Design and Operations. Drilling was performed with the Blue Ice Drill (Kuhl et al, 2014) provided by Ice Drilling Design and Operations.…”

Summary of changes to manuscript

“…1). An ice core was drilled directly adjacent to the PICO borehole at the MIS 5-4 site using the Blue Ice Drill (BID), a 24 cm diameter shallow coring device designed for retrieving large-volume ice samples suitable for trace gas and isotope analysis (Kuhl et al, 2014).…”

“…An ice chronology was constructed for the new Taylor Glacier MIS 5-4 cores by matching variations in Ca 2+ , insoluble particle count, and δ 18 O ice to preexisting EPICA Dome C (EDC) dust (Lambert et al, 2008(Lambert et al, , 2012) and δ 18 O ice records (Jouzel et al, 2007) synchronized to AICC 2012 ( Fig. S2).…”