ICEBERG ALLEY RIESLING ARCHIVE

Stefanie Brachfeld/IODP, CC BY-NDĪ second method of dating depends on paleomagnetists measuring the strength and direction of the sediments’ magnetism. Sediment samples, called cubes, taken for future paleomagnetic research and marked styrofoam plugs identify where samples were taken for ‘moisture and density’ (MAD) measurements. This is the one we sample onboard for density, chemistry and magnetic properties.

ICEBERG ALLEY RIESLING ARCHIVE

In the ship’s lab, we split the core lengthwise into an archive half – to be photographed and described – and a working half. The wireline brings the 31-ft-long (9.5 m) core back to the ship. In a process similar to using an elaborate cookie cutter, it punches through the ocean floor and collects a thin cylinder of the rock and sediment: our core sample. Most of our cores are taken with an advanced hydraulic piston corer. When the drill pipe reaches the coring depth – in our case ranging from 2,600 feet (800 meters) to 12,500 ft (3,800 m) – we lower a coring tool on a wireline down through the pipe. With the ship’s thrusters keeping it precisely in place, workers lower coring equipment, including drill pipe, through an opening in the center of the ship. When the ship arrives at the designated GPS location, the captain, the lab officer and the drilling engineer all check the position coordinates several times. We scientists onboard make best use of our limited time by drilling at what we’ve already agreed should be the most informative locations.Īn animation explains the drilling process. Two months is actually a short amount of time in which to address scientific research questions, but there have been years of careful planning and detailed preparation in advance of this expedition. Fieldwork 1,000 miles (1600 km) from port No wonder researchers from all over the world, at all career stages, are excited to have traveled from India, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, China, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and, of course, the United States to join the expedition. The JOIDES Resolution is the only ship in the world with the drilling tools to collect both soft sediment and hard rock from the ocean – material that we recover in long cylinders called cores. These sediment layers are like a library of the Antarctic’s past environment. This work depends on collecting sediment samples from the ocean floor that were deposited during that time. My research focuses on how Earth’s oceans and climate operated in the past I’m especially interested in how much and how fast the Antarctic ice sheets melted between 2.5 to 4 million years ago, the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were about 400 parts per million, as they are today.

I’m a geologist who specializes in paleoceanography. I’m one of the lucky ones, granted the opportunity to work 12-hour days, seven days a week for 60 days as part of Expedition 382 “Iceberg Alley” in the Scotia Sea, just north of the Antarctic Peninsula. Competition is stiff for one of the 30 scientist berths on the JOIDES Resolution research vessel.

Iceberg alley riesling