Researchers hit rock bottom on Nunavut island

Canadian and Danish researchers have hit the bottom of Müller Ice Cap and will soon be ready to tell the news from 20,000 years ago.

“If we have a better handle on how these things have changed in the past over different periods and climate regimes, this all helps to better inform future predictions,” said Alison Criscitiello, University of Alberta director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab, in a phone call from the ice cap located on Axel Heiberg Island about 400 kilometres north of Grise Fiord.

Criscitiello is one of the leaders of the 13-member research team that travelled to the uninhabited island earlier this year to spend two months in orange tents drilling the 613-metre ice core — the deepest one so far in both Americas.

Ice cores are cylinders of ice used in scientific research.

It is far from the world’s deepest — a 3,701-metre ice core was drilled in the 1990s in East Antarctica — but it is expected to provide scientists with 10,000 to 20,000 years’ worth of Arctic climate history.

Thirteen researchers are spending April and May in tents on the Müller Ice Cap on Axel Heiberg Island. (Photo courtesy of Alison Criscitiello)

The team first arrived on the island at the beginning of April, and plans to stay until the end of May.

It took them about a month of working the drill for 16 hours a day at -30 C temperatures to reach the bottom of the ice cap on May 17, Criscitiello said.

The core is 10-centimetres wide.

At first, the ice was clear with tiny air bubbles in it, she said.

But soon after they hit the 600-metre mark, they started pulling up cylinders of ice with rocks in them.

“It was really exciting, because that’s when we realized we were close to bedrock,” Criscitiello said.

Now that the deepest ice core is complete, they are drilling a series of 70-metre cores as well.

The plan is to fly the ice core into the Eureka research base, located on nearby Ellesmere Island, and from there to the University of Alberta laboratory in Edmonton.

All 13 researchers are having a long “winter camping” experience living in the small tents, Criscitiello said.

“These are not very elaborate structures,” she said.

There is also one communal tent with a propane heater that they use for cooking meals.

Alison Criscitiello is one of 13 researchers working on the Müller Ice Cap on Axel Heiberg Island. (Photo courtesy of Alison Criscitiello)

The group has encountered several Arctic storms while on the island but no animals, Criscitiello said, (although there are unconfirmed rumours about an Arctic fox peeping into their camp one night).

Even though, after two months, Criscitiello is ready to go home and be warm with her two kids, she said she will have special memories from this trip.

“I feel very lucky and privileged to stand on this island,” she said.

“I don’t really know how to describe it, but there is something just very magical about this place.”