LDEO Earth Science Colloquium presents:
The Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2°C (SWAIS2C) Project: Keep Cool and Crary On
with Dr. Molly Patterson, Associate Professor, Binghamton University, SUNY.
ABSTRACT: The Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2°C (SWAIS2C) project aims to investigate the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by examining its past behaviour in a warmer-than-present world from geological archives. Project partners include the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) and a consortium of national Antarctic program and international collaborators from 10 countries (New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Republic of Korea, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands).
Here we present the initial scientific findings from the 222 m of drill core recovered from beneath Crary Ice Rise (CIR), West Antarctica (83°1.6002’S, 172°37.5546’W; ICDP Site 5072_2_A) during the 2025/26 field season. Drilling at CIR required melting a 515 m hole through the Ross Ice Shelf, and then drilling 228 m into permafrost with NQ-sized (45mm diameter) coring tools deployed from our Antarctic Intermediate Depth Drilling Rig (AIDDR). The AIDDR is a modified geotechnical rig that includes warm water delivery through drill pipe to the bit to prevent freezing. The AIDDR successfully drilled to 228 m below seafloor (mbsf), recovering ~212 m of core. Following initial on-ice characterization of the cored material, we split and described the core at the Otago Repository for Core Analysis at the University of Otago, New Zealand in June 2026. Characterization included computed tomography (CT) imaging, collectiion of physical property data (magnetic susceptibility, bulk density, P-wave velocity, color spectrophotometry), line scan imaging, visual core description, biostratigraphic analysis (diatoms, radiolarians, and foraminifera), and X-ray fluorescence core scanning. We also sampled for paleomagnetic analysis, as well as total organic carbon and biogenic silica. The initial results allow us to divide the cored material into five lithostratigraphic units based on grain size, biogenic content, and lithological sequences representing subglacial to ice-free enviornments. Biostratigraphic age estimates indicate that the majority of the record (down to ~200 m below the base of the ice bed) is between 7 and 10 Ma, with a hiatus separating those sediments from the underlying unit with a maximum age of ~17–19 Ma. The range of lithofacies present provides direct evidence of a dynamic and climate-sensitve West Antarctic Ice Sheet since the late early Miocene.
Successful integration of hot water drilling and the AIDDR system provides a basis for future subglacial drilling in the Antarctic deep field where observations are lacking but are urgently needed to better constrain the likely repsonse of West Antarctic Ice Sheet to future warming.
Host: Dr. Kirsty Tinto, amont Associate Research Professor, Marine and Polar Geophysics, LDEO
The Earth Science Colloquium Series, sponsored by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES), provides a lively forum for discussing a wide variety of topics within the Earth sciences and related fields. Colloquia are attended by the full range of scientific and technical staff at LDEO. Colloquium attendance is required of all pre-orals DEES graduate students.
