Centre for Ice and Climate
Centre for Ice and Climate is the research group working on ice core related climate research. The research group is umbrella for the water isotope group, the greenhouse gas group, the impurity group, the dating group and the ice modelling group. Centre for Ice and Climate is a leading international group in ice core related research, pioneering novel measurements and ice flow models and leading international ice core drilling projects especially on the Greenland ice sheet. Read more >>
The EastGRIP project was initiated in 2015 with the aim to drill a 2650 m deep ice core in the center of the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). The project is international and will give climate information reaching back to the Last Interglacial and learn us on how an ice stream is sliding and flowing. The project is supplemented with a wide span of surface projects including drone vapor measurements, surface snow and weather observations, depth penetrating ice radars and autonomous vehicles. At present the drill depth is 2120 m and we expect to reach bedrock during the 2021 field season (more info eastgrip.org).
Centre for Ice and Climate in Copenhagen has a long tradition in leading international drilling projects. The previous projects GRIP, NGRIP, NEEM and RECAP have led to comprehensive investigations into the climate of the past 128,000 years, corresponding to the most recent glacial-interglacial cycle. We also drill ice cores in the Antarctic in cooperation with our partners (EPICA EDC and EML, RICE, ABN, Mount Brown) and are at present very active in the coming European Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice (BEOI) project.
By performing measurements on the ice cores, we have the opportunity to study how climate has changed, and by measuring the air confined in the small bubbles of the ice, we reveal changes in the composition of the past atmosphere. We use data from ice core drillings as well as from radar observations to examine the ice sheet’s anatomy and flow pattern, and by counting annual layers in the ice sheet we can precisely date the ice.
