Discoveries Within the Ice: Plans of the Ice Coring and Drilling Science Community

The search for answers to questions about our changing climate creates an urgent need to discover the clues to the past archived in glaciers and ice sheets, and to understand current ice sheet behavior. Recognizing that U.S. scientific productivity in this area depends upon a mechanism for ensuring continuity and international cooperation in ice coring and drilling efforts, along with availability of appropriate drills, drilling expertise, and innovations in drilling technology, the Ice Drilling Program Office (IDPO) and its partner, the Ice Drilling Design and Operations group (IDDO), collectively known as IDPO/IDDO, work with the science community to articulate integrated research, technological planning and delivery. This presentation highlights science goals articulated in the IDPO Long Range Science Plan, which lays out the scientific goals and future directions of the multidisciplinary research community and international partners. The science fits into four broad categories: Climate; Ice Dynamics and History; the Sub-ice Environment; and Ice as a Scientific Observatory. A companion plan, the IDDO Long Range Drilling Technology Plan, discusses details of the drills and new development driven by the Long Range Science Plan. The ice drilling technology described in the Long Range Drilling Technology Plan spans from the use of the multi-ton Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) drill for deep drilling projects such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide, in Antarctica, to shallow drilling endeavors using hand augers, and beyond to identification of new drilling tools not yet in existence.