Investigating the subglacial environment and geology of Antarctica and Greenland by direct means

Here we present an initiative for the International Polar Year in 2007/08 to directly investigate the subglacial environment and geology of Antarctica and Greenland, representing a new frontier in ice sheet research, and a proposal to develop the technology - a hydro-mechanical drill - necessary to obtain rock and sediment samples from beneath deep glacier ice. The Antarctic continent is 98% ice covered and thus the subglacial environment is inaccessible to the geologist, glaciologist and biologist as well as other scientists. While subglacial geology influences the conditions at the ice sheet base and thus the subglacial environment, the subglacial environment provides a habitat for life in a truly extreme environment. High geothermal heat fluxes play a key role in facilitating fast ice streaming in Greenland as well as in Antarctica. Basal melt water production in the ice sheets interior, lubricating the ice sheet base, is playing a key role in facilitating the fast motion of the North-East Ice Stream in Greenland as well as the West-Antarctic ice streams. However aero-geophysical and seismic observations in combination with interpolation from surrounding out crops and the study of sediment deposited by the ice sheet is currently the only information about the underlying bedrock geology of these ice sheets. Limited information about the subglacial environment is further available from a very limited number of boreholes drilled to the bottom of West-Antarctic ice streams and ongoing ice coring in East and West-Antarctica as well as Greenland. We therefore propose to start during the International Polar Year in 2007/08 a field oriented research initiative to systematically study the subglacial environment and underlying geology and its influence on the dynamic of ice sheets. At present several proposals are pending to further develop the necessary technology: fast-access drilling using hot water with the capability to retrieve rock, sediment, water and ice samples from the ice base at an intermediate depth of up to 2000 m. In addition efforts are also made to develop supplemental tools for deep ice coring projects, to retrieve rock and sediment samples from the bottom of existing and proposed boreholes.