The Green2Ice project involves fieldwork in Greenland: Objective 1 of the project is to drill a replicate ice core in the bottom part of the GRIP borehole.

An ice core was drilled at GRIP from the surface down to 3029 m depth in the early 1990’s. The ice in this ice core is in stratigraphic order down to the depth of 2751 m, where the ice is 104,000 years old. Below this depth, the ice is folded and disturbed. Green2Ice intends to replicate the bottom 200 m of the GRIP ice core, i.e. from a depth of 2850 m and down to bedrock. It is also our intention to drill a sediment/rock core at the bottom of the borehole to obtain sufficient material to use in situ cosmogenic nuclides to find out when the bedrock at GRIP was last ice free.

The fieldwork is planned to happen over two field seasons:

2025: The mobile ice core drilling camp was moved from EastGRIP to GRIP. This required a traverse of ~340 km. At GRIP, the top of the old borehole was located and a camera sent down to ensure that there is free passage for an ice core drill to be lowered into the borehole. Thus the first Green2Ice field season has been successfully completed and the camp is ready for the drilling to start in 2026.

2026: Directional drilling will be used to drill the replicate ice core of the lower 200 m of the ice sheet. After that, a rock drill will be used to obtain basal material from the sediments/rocks beneath the ice sheet.