Although there is an air of adventure around ICE2001, it really is all about science, carried out by a scientific team and with a scientific goal.

Logan Ice-Core Depth vs Time

That goal is to develop a 10,000 year, detailed ice-core record of climate and atmospheric changes for the Northwest Pacific and Western Arctic. It will uncover long-term changes in important climate variables such as air temperatures and precipitation, and help to place present climate, under human-induced influences, in the context of naturally varying climate. The data will contribute to addressing a broad range of climate change issues related to both mitigation and adaptation.

In the past decade, scientists have drilled and analyzed several ice cores from Baffin, Devon and Ellesmere islands in the eastern Arctic. With the ICE2001 project, the investigation has now shifted to the west, especially the Saint Elias Mountains because of the pivotal role they play in ocean-land-atmosphere climate and the role of North Pacific weather on the state of snow and glacier related water resources in western North America.

This will not be the first attempt to search into Mount Logan's cold archives. In 1980, a 102.5-m long ice core was successfully recovered by a research team from Environment Canada's National Hydrology Research Institute led by Dr. Gerald Holdsworth. The analysis of this ice core yielded a wealth of valuable data on changes in air temperature, snow accumulation rates and atmospheric pollutant loadings over the last ~300 years, and offered some new insights into the dynamics of ocean-atmosphere coupling for a region that plays a key role in regulating North America's climate, past and present.

The drilling site for ICE2001 has been carefully selected. The accumulation rate at this site is lower than that sampled in 1980, and hence will yield a much longer climate record.

In preparation for ICE2001, a small field party ascended to the upper reaches of Mount Logan in 2000 and placed drill camp infrastructure and erected meteorological instrumentation. The actual ice-core drilling will occur in May and June 2001, with a goal of recovering a 225 metre long ice core to bedrock. Some measurements and sampling of the core will be done on the mountain, but most of the core will be shipped out for analysis in laboratories in Canada and elsewhere. While the drilling is going on, other scientists will be elsewhere on Mount Logan and nearby glaciers taking measurements and surface samples of snow and ice for additional information; this is especially to help understand the climate as it is today. During 2002, there will be further, detailed analysis of the ice-core and the other samples, with goal of producing high quality data, its analysis and interpretation.

Building on the analysis of the Logan data, studies will examine, among other things, the climate connections between Northwest Pacific and eastern Asia and underpin a computer-based atmospheric vapour flux model for the Saint Elias Mountains and the Gulf of Alaska.

Clients for the results of ICE2001 include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change. There is wide international recognition of the need for high-quality, reliable scientific information for specific locations that only projects like ICE2001 can provide.