Greenland ice core project

The Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) was a research project organized through the European Science Foundation (ESF). The project ran from 1989 to 1995, with drilling seasons from 1990 to 1992. In 1988, the project was accepted as an ESF-associated program, and the fieldwork was started in Greenland in the summer of 1989. GRIP aimed to collect and investigate a 3000-meter-long ice core drilled at the apex of the Greenland ice sheet, known as the Summit of the ice cap. The Greenland ice sheet comprises more than 90% of the total ice sheet and glacier ice outside Antarctica. The project was managed by a Steering Committee of the University of Bern's Physics Institute, chaired by Professor Bernhard Stauffer. Funding came from eight European nations (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), and from the European Union. Studies of nuclear isotopes and various atmospheric constituents provided by the cores allowed the team to construct detailed records of climate change, covering the last 100,000 years.

Background The loss of mass of the Greenland ice sheet has been accelerating due to the effects of climate change caused by human activities. The mass loss of ice sheets and glaciers causes sea levels to rise, terrestrial albedo to decline, and patterns of ocean circulation to change. It is predicted that the sea level will rise by approximately 7 meters if all the ice melts. The rise in sea levels due to ice sheet glaciers' melt would make it impossible for people to live in coastal regions. Because there is no preserved ancient terrestrial sediment in Greenland, most ice sheet history is based on indirect records. Using the limited paleoclimate data, researchers have shown that the extent of ice in Greenland has changed significantly over time, and this suggests that the change in size is due to a variety of physical environmental factors. The best estimates based on the paleoclimate data show that the Greenland ice sheet is significantly reduced by even a small increase in the negative effects of climate change. A 2020 research paper suggests that the melting of the ice sheet that covers Greenland will accelerate much faster than previously predicted.

Results and findings Studies of nuclear isotopes and various atmospheric constituents provide detailed records of climate change over 100,000 years. From the analysis of the oxygen isotope ratio of the GRIP core excavated in 1992, it became clear that abrupt climate change occurred in Greenland during the last glacial period. This happened more than 20 times. It further became clear that the warm and cold periods alternated. Near the bottom of the GRIP core, oxygen isotope ratios fluctuated sharply; this was initially interpreted as an indication of repeated violent climate change during the last interglacial period in Greenland.

Techniques The first drilling of the Greenland Ice Core Project went only a few hundred meters into the glacier ice. But from 1989 to 1992 GRIP successfully drilled a 3029-meter ice core to the bed of the Greenland ice sheet at Summit (72°34.74′N 37°33.92′W). In 1991, ice cores 783 to 2482 meters long were drilled, and an ice core was drilled to bedrock in 1992. The ice core was first taken to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, where it was stored in a cold room at -26 °C. Five sections of ice core with a length of about 300 to 400 mm were shipped to Japan. A wide range of information related to past and present climatic and environmental changes can be analyzed from the ice. The glacier layers that are collected can reveal up to 200,000 years of evidence. Studies of isotopes and various atmospheric constituents in the core have provided a detailed record of climate variability reaching more than 100,000 years back in time. The results indicate that the Holocene climate was remarkably stable, but they confirm the occurrence of rapid climatic variation during the last ice age. Delta-O-18 variations observed in the core that are believed to date from the Eemian Stage have not been confirmed by other records, including the North Greenland core, and are no longer believed to represent climate events. The interglacial climate of the Eemian Stage appears to have been as stable as the Holocene. Three different types of ice sheet core drills were used in the project, differing mainly in the depths they can drill to.

Hand auger The hand auger weighs 80 kg, can be operated by a single person, and is useful for collecting ice cores with a diameter of 74 mm from the top 10 m of the ice cap.

Shallow drill The shallow drill can take cores up to 50 m long and 74mm in diameter from the top 350 m of ice, and it does not require drilling fluid.

Deep drill The deep drill works in liquid-filled holes, can retrieve the core, and can be operated at any depth. Compared to other drills, the operation is relatively slow.

Related projects In addition to GRIP, there have been several other ice core projects in Greenland, such as the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2), the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NorthGRIP), and the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM).

Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2) Initially GISP2 seemed to overturn an earlier result discovered by GRIP. Based on the sharp fluctuations of the oxygen isotope ratio near the bottom of the GRIP core, it had been hypothesized that severe climate change occurred repeatedly during the last interglacial period in Greenland. However, the oxygen isotope ratio data of the GISP2 core that was excavated only 30 km away from the sampling point of the GRIP core did not match the GRIP data. It became clear that the ice layer structure was disturbed by folds at the bottom of the ice sheet in both cores, indicating that the interpretation that there was severe climate change during the final interglacial period may be incorrect. The GISP2 reconstructions are relatively old. Recent studies have raised questions about evaluating the relationship between temperature and Delta-O-18 during the Holocene in view of the elevation changes in the ice cap at the GISP2 site. The GISP2 reconstructions changed the relationship between Delta-O-18 and temperature by a factor of two during the Holocene, while more recent reconstructions leave that relationship unchanged. Elevation change affects the Delta-O-18 record, and the older GISP2 reconstructions do not account for elevation changes.

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