2010-01-04 - Drilling ice cores north of the Arctic Circle takes stamina, determination and most of all, electricity. In these isolated conditions very little happens without power, which is why ABB electrical installation specialist, Bruno Stocker, spent a six-week drilling season setting up a reliable power supply for a team of climate scientists in northern Greenland.
By
ABB Communications
Greenland is dotted with research stations that are trying to establish the history of the Earth’s atmosphere. The scientists hope that understanding the past will help to predict the future of our climate.
Stocker, and a hand-picked selection of reliable ABB low-voltage products, joined the crew of the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling station - NEEM - earlier this year. An international research project was set up at the station in 2007 to retrieve ice cores from the second-to-last warm interglacial period, the Eemian, about 115,000 years ago.
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Bruno Stocker beside the electrical panel he installed to ensure a safe power supply for the entire NEEM camp. The cables in the picture supply power to all of the tents.
Friends of Stocker at the University of Bern, which is involved with the project, told their 60-year-old colleague that NEEM’s electrical installation needed some attention. As one of ABB’s senior experts on electrical installation and the head of the company’s experimental and testing laboratory for power electronics in Turgi, Switzerland, Stocker leapt at the chance to help out.
NEEM is operational only from mid-April to mid-August. The rest of the year it is simply too dark and cold to work. That means researchers have to make the very best of the time they have at the station, which is reliant on a 125-kW diesel generator for all of its electrical power.
No power, no research
Up to 36 people live and work at the station and, without electricity, nothing can be done: no drilling for core samples, no research and no work. Stocker took unpaid leave from his job at ABB and plunged into planning his trip, ordering equipment and materials that would be needed north of the Arctic Circle. “I was glad I could use ABB products,” he said.
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Studying ice cores from Greenland's interglacial period 115,000 years ago helps scientists predict how our own climate might change in future.
The anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse effect is projected to warm the earth by 1.1 - 6.4°C by the end of this century, depending on the emission scenario chosen by humankind. Studying Greenland’s ice to see how various aspects of the Eemian climate developed can help scientists project how our own climate might change in future.
Students, teachers and specialists like Stocker have all volunteered to help drill for core samples of old Eemian ice.
Analysis of the ice cores reveals much about past climate conditions, including temperatures, atmospheric impurities and the concentration of greenhouse gases at the time.
In camp, Stocker set about making the camp’s electrical power secure and safe, installing a new fuse box, secure cable connections, circuit breakers, and built a control panel for the drilling machine.
The job was challenging. For example, if a screw went missing, “I just had to think of something,” he said. When a co-worker accidentally severed a power cable with a snow blower, there was no spare cable, so Stocker had to splice the wires back together one at a time.
After one-and-a-half hours, the power was back on. Improvising made the job exciting, he said. “I would be happy to go back for a third drilling season next year.”