ANDRILL’s New Ice Shelf Project
10.10.2006 - Other
A New Zealand-led, international group of 50 scientists are pursuing a research project in Antarctica to determine past ice shelf responses to climate forcing, including variability at a range of timescales.
Known as ANDRILL (Antarctic geological drilling), the programme uses a Wellington-developed drill rig to penetrate the seabed beneath Antarctica's 100m-thick Ross Ice Shelf and retrieve a 1000m-long core of sediment and rock. The aim is to understand how fast climates have changed in the past, the nature of these changes, and under what temperature conditions they occurred. The co-leader GNS scientist Tim Naish expects to reconstruct the history of the ice from 5 million to 10 million years ago, and more detailed results for the past million years.
This drilling project, 15km west of New Zealand's Scott Base, will last until the end of December and a second drill site, 25 km east of Scott Base, is planned for summer 2007-08.
