British Antarctic Survey leads the world in hot water drilling through ice. We provide the hardware and expertise to access polar subglacial environments through ice ranging in thickness from a few 100s of metres to over 2 km.
British Antarctic Survey has developed and applied the technique of hot-water drilling to provide subglacial access for more than 40 years. This technique enables direct observations and sampling of the ocean and seabed beneath floating ice shelves and sediments beneath grounded ice. These observations are central to characterising sub ice shelf oceanographic processes, ice-ocean and ice-bed interactions, benthic biology, biogeochemical processes, subglacial ecosystems, and revealing recent ice history captured in subglacial sediments.
The drilling group develop, maintain, and support a range of drills that have a fully modular design, capable of being deployed by Twin Otter aircraft and helicopter, with the largest drill system requiring over-snow traverse logistics. The current hot water drill infrastructure for use in the Arctic and Antarctic consists of three independent drilling systems with depth capabilities of 500 m, 1000 m (see Makinson and Anker, 2014), and 2300 m (see Anker et al., 2021). These systems all use petrol-fuelled generators, and water-heaters powered by aviation fuel to heat the drill water to around 90 °C. For example, the 1000 m hot water drill system uses high pressure pumps to deliver 120 litres of water per minute down the drill hose. The 0.75 MW of heating power can melt a 30 cm diameter hole at up to 1.7 metres per minute. Once a subglacial access hole is drilled, freezing will close the hole within a day or two. In order to maintain subglacial access, the hot water drill reamer is periodically used to restore the hole to its original diameter. BAS hot water drills have reliably provided numerous subglacial access holes up to 941 m deep through Filchner-Ronne, Larsen-C, and George VI ice shelves, Thwaites Glacier and Petermann Glacier (Greenland), and up to 2154 m on Rutford Ice Stream.
To facilitate clean access, drill water filtration to 0.1 μm and ultraviolet modules (254 and 185 nm) have been developed for deep subglacial lake and ice sheet access. Additional modules extend the depth capability to 2800 m and the operating altitude to over 2000 m. For further details see Makinson et al., 2021.
30 December, 2023 by Emily Newton
Every year at British Antarctic Survey is a huge team effort. What we do couldn’t happen without every one our talented staff – whether they are doing the legwork of …
29 January, 2019 by Michael Dinn
In January 2019 a science and engineering team drilled over two kilometres through the ice sheet in West Antarctica using hot water. It was the first time they had done this …
24 August, 2015 by Keith Nicholls
Standing anywhere on Petermann ice shelf, the overriding sense you get is the proximity of water. A lot of water. Standing water, ranging from small ponds, up to lakes hundreds …
29 November, 2016
As spring returns to the southern hemisphere British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has started another research season which will take them over land, sea and ice in search of answers to …
23 November, 2016
New study reveals when West Antarctica’s largest glacier started retreating Reporting this week (Wednesday 23 November) in the journal Nature an international team led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) explains …
This joint UK-US research programme aims to improve the understanding of the processes affecting ice sheet stability to predict, with more certainty, the future impact of sea-level rise from Thwaites …
The polar ice sheets play a major role in controlling Earth’s sea level and climate, but our understanding of their history and motion is poor. The biggest uncertainty in predicting …
Understanding the contribution that polar ice sheets make to global sea-level rise is recognised internationally as urgent. The mission of this five-year project is to capture new observations and data …
MELT is an ice-based project that will use autonomous sensors to monitor the ice column and ocean beneath the ice shelf in the critical area of the grounding line (the …
PRESCIENT (UK Polar Research Expertise for Science and Society) is a joint programme between BAS (British Antarctic Survey) and CPOM (the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling). The programme supports …
THOR is a ship-based and ice-based project that will examine sedimentary record both offshore from the glacier and beneath the ice shelf, together with glacial landforms on the sea bed, …
Using this capability:
Access to this hot water drilling capability is through funded collaborative research grants.
For more information, or to discuss any potential proposals please contact Keith Makinson (kmak@bas.ac.uk) or Paul Anker (pake1@bas.ac.uk).
Please contact us at least 3-months before the call deadline to ensure that proposals can be fully costed and accommodated. To ensure successful delivery of projects, a component of BAS science and engineering staff time will need to be included in the project proposal, together with deployment consumables, and any bespoke drilling requirements.
In addition, any Antarctic field operations will require completion of a Pre-Award Operational Support Planning Questionnaire (OSPQ) to assess the feasibility of the project from a logistical perspective (at least 3-months before the call deadline).
Please note that hot water drilling field projects usually operate with a 2–3-year lead time.
To see recent field activities, visit ‘hotwateronice’ on Instagram and X/Twitter.
