Big news ... EGRIP, a new core to bedrock will be drilled in the ice stream leading to Zachariae! The 46 metric ton dome at NEEM and sledges of equipment have already been dragged on skis 465 km to the new site (with a Pistonbully 300).
Before stripping out NEEM, its 2550 m deep antifreeze-filled borehole at NEEM, undisturbed since 2012, was logged for temperature (precision 0.01 °C), inclination, azimuth, borehole diameter and pressure. The temperature data can help reconstruct past surface temperatures and monitori meltwater at the bed. Diameters tracl pressure balance of the liquid in the borehole and putative changes around the folded zones of the Eemian ice. The inclination and azimuth monitor the deformation of the borehole. The surface velocity at NEEM has been ~5 m/yr for five years allowing adequate accuracy.
The strain net around the NEEM drill hole will also be remeasured. The motion of the ice sheet is critical to interpretation of ice layers; curiously neither direction nor speed has been constant (1st image below).
Various science projects were conducted en route to EGRIP such as firn and depth radars, even continuing them to Summit. There is a
most excellent 96 page pdf that covers everything from scientific priorities to the bamboo pee pole at camp. The project was funded to the tune of 25 million DKK by a Danish charitable foundation AP Møller with historic ties to Maersk shipping.
The biggest ice stream in Greenland passes through the EGRIP site. It is not really possible to anticipate future changes in the marine outlets Zachariae, Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden and Storstrømmen without a good grip on NEGIS itself, which supposedly starts over a geothermal anomaly. That will be checked with seismic studies. The ice reaches velocities over 100 m/yr some 200 km from the ice divide yet still 500 km from the coast.
It proved possible to find a site on the upper ice stream without crevasses. The ice at the chosen site is 2550 m to bedrock and flows at 65 m/yr (see attached images). Previous deep cores have all been along the summit ridge; this one would allow study of ice flow dynamics via rheology and deformation below the surface as well as basal sliding, borehole deformation, and basal water processes.
They totally botched the logarithmic color key on the high resolution velocity map (which seems to overlie a hillshaded DEM) and it is not possible read out velocities at specific points nor contour them. The low resolution velocity map did have sufficient detail to let speed profiles to be put on Cresis radar profiles.
Over 50 kyr of radar stratigraphy at EGRIP has been mapped back to NGRIP which in turn is tied in to all the other cores including Antarctica's. A core here will enable climatic studies of this period and especially the Holocene where high resolution records of greenhouse gasses, water isotopes and impurities are not available for East Greenland.
Drilling is a little tricky as borehole will slant 195 meters downhill (7.6% off-vertical) before the three year project is finished in 2020. The drill cores themselves will be ~13 cm in diameter. They have not yet disclosed the precise lat,lon of the drilling site but the ice stratigraphy appears slightly concave upward rather than flat as advertised.
http://www.isogklima.nbi.ku.dk/nyhedsfolder/danske_nyheder/egrip-2015-feltplan/Renland-EGRIP2015FieldPlan.pdf