Apply to Sail: Expedition 373 Antarctic Cenozoic Paleoclimate

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is now accepting applications for scientific participants to sail on Expedition 373 Antarctic Cenozoic Paleoclimate aboard a Mission Specific Platform (MSP) provided by the ECORD Science Operator. To learn more about the scientific objectives of this expedition, life at sea, and how to apply to sail, please join in a web-based seminar on Monday 29th August 2016 at 2pm BST (1pm GMT, 9am EDT). To register for the webinar, click here.

The George V and Adélie Land continental shelf of East Antarctica contains a record of Antarctica’s climate and ice history from the warm and vegetated landscapes of Eocene greenhouse climates to latest Eocene glacial inception and the dynamic ice sheet margins of the Oligocene. Because of the gently dipping strata and glacial erosion, sediments of a wide age range reach close to the sea bed and are accessible through shallow drilling by robotic seafloor drills.

The history of this Antarctic margin includes warm-world high-CO2 environments, which will help to understand Antarctic climate and the limits of ice sheet stability under future global warming. Up to now there are extremely few well-recovered Eocene sediment sequences from Antarctica, and we aim to fill this gap in knowledge.

The expedition aims to drill, core, and log between eight and eighteen 50-m-deep boreholes on the George V Land and Adélie Land continental shelf of East Antarctica, using the British Geological Survey Rockdrill 2 (RD2), deployed from the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer, operated by the Lockheed-Martin Antarctic Support Contract (ASC) for the U.S. National Science Foundation’s United States Antarctic Program (USAP).

The offshore phase of the expedition will last from 24 December 2017 to 22 February 2018, focusing on core recovery, curation, sampling for ephemeral properties and biomarkers, biostratigraphy, physical properties, preliminary lithostratigraphy, and downhole logging. Subsequently, an Onshore Science Party (OSP) will be held at the MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany, in Summer 2018 (exact dates to be confirmed), where the cores will be split. The OSP will be a maximum of 4 weeks long.

For complete information about Expedition 373, as well as up-to-date expedition information, go to the Expedition 373 webpage.  To learn more about MSPs, visit the ECORD Science Operator webpage.

Opportunities exist for for researchers (including graduate students) in all specialties. While other expertise may be considered, specialists in the following fields are required: paleontology, sedimentology, organic geochemistry, structural geology, paleomagnetics, physical properties, geophysics, and petrophysics/downhole logging.

U.S.-affiliated scientists interested in participating in this expedition should apply to sail through the U.S. Science Support Program. The deadline to apply is August 31, 2016.

For questions, please email usssp@ldeo.columbia.edu.