SGER: Retrieval of Basal Water from the NorthGRIP Borehole

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ABSTRACTWhite OPP-0413572This award is being made as a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER). A new deep drilling operation was completed in 2003 in North Greenland at the NorthGRIP site over the past seven years. Drillers reached bedrock at a depth of 3, 085 M, thus providing the longest Greenland deep ice core. After the drilling was completed, basal water flooded the hole to a depth of about 45 M and 0.5 M of frozen pink ice (refrozen basal melt water) was recovered. The ice is filled with gas which has a density of about 0.3 g/cm3. Recent discoveries of bacterial life in and under Antarctic ice have revealed that the Earth contains a previously unrecognized cold biosphere that is actively involved in biogeochemical processes. Little is known about the basal water ice at NorthGRIP, such as why it is pink, what the gas is, if it contains bacterial life and how much water is at the base. Thus, Greenland, like Antarctica, now is known to have basal liquid water in some locations and may have evidence of life in an extreme environment.The broader impacts of this proposal are numerous. Ice cores are a key source of information on past climates and can help scale human impacts on the environment. They reveal how the climate system works and the content of the gases. The samples collected will offer a 'snapshot' into potential life in extreme environments similar to those that may exist on other planets. This Principal Investigators are requesting funds to partner with the European NorthGRIP community and support a field season in the summer of 2004 to collect the ice that is currently frozen in the borehole, and to collect clean samples of the basal melt water. These samples will be available to U.S. researchers by splitting the samples for analyses.