Antarctica

ANDRILL programme 

Antarctica is a major driver of oceanic and atmospheric conditions worldwide, yet its role on modulating global climate is poorly understood. A major drilling programme, ANDRILL, is proposed to significantly improve the understanding of ice sheet behaviour and sea ice dynamics over the past 35 million years, and their influence on the New Zealand region. ANDRILL will be the most ambitious scientific drilling project yet undertaken on the edges of Antarctica.The multi-year project will involve scientists from New Zealand, US, UK, Italy, and Germany. GNS will probably take a leading role in helping to coordinate the project.

The aim is to recover sediment cores up to 40 million years old from four drill sites alongside the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and on the Ross Ice Shelf in the Southern McMurdo Sound region. Drilling is expected to start in the summer of 2003/2004. Two of the sites will involve the deepest seafloor drill-holes yet attempted in Antarctica.

During the 2001-2002 summer GNS scientists led geophysical site investigations of several of the proposed drill sites for ANDRILL, using multichannel seismic, magnetic and gravity techniques. The results from these surveys will help to refine the proposed drill site locations.

GNS seismic team collecting seismic data in November 2001, to delineate sedimentary layers beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf

Contact Tim Naish here