Clean hot water drilling for exploration of the Antarctic deep subglacial environment

Abstract:

Overlain by several kilometres of ice, the subglacial environments deep beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are regarded as extreme habitats for microbial life and repositories of important paleoclimate records. Of significant scientific interest, yet remaining largely unexplored, accessing and sampling these environments presents several challenges to existing drilling technologies. With over half of the ice sheet believed to be resting on a wet bed, much of it part of a hydrological drainage network, accessing of this environment must conform to international environmental contamination protocols. This makes hot water drilling the most viable option for clean, fast, access through thick ice. After two decades of planning, involving the development of drilling techniques for subglacial access, instrument design and logistics set up, significant progress has been made in attempts to directly access, measure, and sample subglacial lakes and sediments. Combining the experiences from the notable setbacks and successes, as well as recent field testing for this drilling technique, the most practical technical options and operational procedures for future clean entry into Subglacial Lake Ellsworth and other deep (>3000 m) access targets will be presented.