North Greenland Ice core Project

Here are we In the middle of the Greenland ice cap in about 3000 m's height. The NGRIP camp is located at: 75,1 N and 42,3 W. The closest airports are at Kangerlussuaq, Illulissat and Thule Air Base, 951 km, 722 km and 733 km away.

The current drill depth The graph shows the development of the deep drilling. During upstart we ususally expect a speed of about 50 m/week, but once the drilling is running in routine we hope to reach 145 m/week on average.  As may be seen on the plot the drilling proceeded nicely until July 23rd 2000, when the drill got stuck. The drill got up again after frozen glycol had been poured into the drill hole, but the remaining part of the season had to be used for cleaning the hole. In 2001 another 70m's of core were drilled, but the drilling this year was complicated by relatively high temperatures close to bedrock. On August 2nd 2001 the season ended in a depth of 3001 m. In may 2003 the drilling restarts with a drill technic which has been adopted to the warm basal temperature. On July 17th 2003 the drilling at NorthGRIP reached bedrock at a depth of 3084.99 m , and the drilling was terminated.

Click on the map in order to see a bigger version

Click on the map in order to see a bigger version Click here to see the 2003 penetration

What is NGRIP?

NGRIP is a multinational research program, funded by participating institutions in Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Iceland and the US. Primary sponsor is the Danish Research Council. 

The Goal

is to retrieve and analyze a 3080 m long ice core drilled through the Greenland ice sheet at a place selected to give the longest reliable record. 

The objective

The field camp was built in 1996. The center is a 7 m high wooden dome with generator, kitchen, water and communicator facilities. Other permanent structures are heavy dome shaped tents used for workshop and storage. Participants sleep in temporary tent structures. 

The NGRIP Operation Center

is located in Kangerlussuaq (SFJ) 930 km south-west of NGRIP. Two operation managers organize the transit of NGRIP personnel and cargo. They maintain the communication with the field camp using radios and satellite links. 

Transport

of passengers and heavy cargo is done by chartered ski equipped US Air Force LC-130 airplanes. At NGRIP the airplanes use a 3 km long and 60 m wide skiway maintained to remove undulations and give a hard surface. 

The weather conditions at NGRIP

range in the summer from beautiful to terrible, day temperatures from -25 to 5 C , wind speeds from zero to 25 m/s. The daily weather at NGRIP is automatically monitored and may be viewed at 

Today's weather at NGRIP (from NASA) 

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Questions concerning this web site may be sent to Katrine Krogh Andersen / kka@gfy.ku.dk

This web site is updated daily between June 21st and August 13th 2004