- 1Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Glaziologie, Bremerhaven, Germany (frank.wilhelms@awi.de)
- 2Georg-August-Universität, Geowissenschaftliches Zentrum, Geochemie und Isotopengeologie, Göttingen, Germany
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
The European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice aims at retrieving a continuous ice core record of climate feedback and forcing spanning about 1.5 Ma back in time. In that period the cyclicity of glacial/interglacial changes in continental ice sheet volume and temperature changed from 40 ka to the well-known 100 ka cycles encountered over the last 800 ka. After determining a suitable drill site Little Dome C (LDC), 35 km southwest of Concordia station, during an extensive pre-site survey, we penetrated to 2800 m depth during the third deep drilling season 2024/25, roughly spanning at least 1.2 Ma and a basal unit below 2584 m. We will report on the drilling and core processing activities, completed to the bottom at 2800 m depth.
Frank Wilhelms 1,2; Julien Westhoff 3; Robert Mulvaney 4; Matthias Hüther 1; Olivier Alemany 5; Steffen Bo Hansen 3; Dorthe Dahl-Jensen 3,6; Hubertus Fischer 7; Amaelle Landais 8; Ailsa Chung 5; Frédéric Parrenin 5; Carlo Barbante 9,10; Saverio Panichi 11; Gianluca Bianchi Fasani 12; Lisa Ardoin 13; Melanie Behrens 1; Nicolas Bienville 8; Grant Boeckmann 3; Marie Bouchet 8; Pierre Henri Blard 13,14; Andrea Ceinini 11; Giuditta Celli 10; Justin Chaillot 8; Danilo Collino 11; Rémi Dallmayr 1; Andrea De Vito 11; Giuliano Dreossi 10; Romain Duphil 5; Olaf Eisen 1,15; François Fripiat 13; Inès Gay 16; Tamara Gerber 3*; Vasileios Gkinis 3; Markus Grimmer 7; Romilly Harris-Stuart 8 +; Maria Hörhold 1; Fortunat Joos 7; Iben Koldtoft 3; Florian Krauß 7; Manuela Krebs 1; Thom Laepple 1; Gunther Lawer 1; Johannes Lemburg 1; Martin Leonhardt 1; Carlos Martin 4; Hanno Meyer 1; Bénédicte Minster 8; Michaela Mühl 7; Philippe Possenti 5; Catherine Ritz 5; Michele Scalet 11; Jakob Schwander 7; Federico Scoto 10,17; Barbara Seth 7; Lison Soussaintjean 7; Barbara Stenni 10; Hans Christian Steen-Larsen 18; Barbara Stenni 10; Thomas Stocker 7; Jean-Louis Tison 13; James Veale 4; Ilka Weikusat 1,19; Eric Wolff 20; Daniele Zannoni 10. Affiliations: 1 Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Glaziologie, Bremerhaven, Germany; 2 Georg-August-Universität, Geowissenschaftliches Zentrum, Geochemie und Isotopengeologie, Göttingen, Germany; 3 Section for the Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; 4 Ice Dynamics and Palaeoclimate, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United Kingdom; 5 Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, IGE, Grenoble, France; 6 Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada; 7 Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; 8 Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; 9 CNR-Institute of Polar Sciences (CNR-ISP), Mestre, Venice, Italy; 10 Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Mestre, Venice, Italy; 11 ENEA-National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Brasimone Research Center, Camugnano, BO, Italy; 12 ENEA-National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Casaccia, RO, Italy; 13 Université Libre de Bruxelles, Laboratoire de Glaciologie (GLACIOL), Faculté des Sciences, Bruxelles, Belgium; 14 CRPG, CNRS, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France; 15 Department of Geosciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany; 16 Institut polaire français Paul-Emile Victor, Technopôle Brest-Iroise, Plouzané, France; 17 Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), Lecce, Italy; 18 Geofysisk institutt, Universitetet i Bergen, Bergen, Norway; 19 Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Germany; 20 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; * now at: Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; + now at: College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
How to cite: Wilhelms, F. and the BELDC field participants 2022/23, 23/24, 24/25, stable isotope field measurements team, dating team: Beyond EPICA Little Dome C (BELDC) field seasons to bedrock, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-14784, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-14784, 2025.
