In June 2004 the diesel fired Mistral Hot Water/Steam Power Washer was supplied to a British Antarctic Survey team heading to the South Pole to further their work on Sub Glacial Access.
Hot water drills and Subglacial access
British Antarctic Survey has developed and applied the technique of hot-water drilling to provide subglacial access for more than 30 years. This technique enables direct observations and sampling of the ocean cavity and seabed beneath floating ice shelves and sediments beneath grounded ice. These observations are central to characterising ice-ocean and ice-bed interactions and revealing recent ice history captured in subglacial sediments
Subglacial access
A variety of instruments can be lowered down these subglacial access holes to capture a wide range of data. These include:
- Ocean profiling instruments for water mass properties
- Water samples taken at discrete heights in the water column
- Sediment cores from the ocean floor or beneath ground ice for ice sheet history
- Sub-ice shelf moorings to capture long term oceanographic measurements
- Ice column instruments for long term temperature and ice deformation measurements
In addition to the hot water drilling systems, an array of instrumentation is also maintained, including borehole sensors and cameras, water sampling instrumentation, surface sediment corers, gravity corers and winching systems.
