In his article on rapid climate change Physics Today, August 2003, page 30), Spencer Weart incorrectly credits Willi Dansgaard’s Danish team for augering the first deep ice core to reach the bottom of an active ice sheet from Camp Century, Greenland. This honor rests with B. Lyle Hansen and associates Herbert Ueda and Donald Garfield from the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire. In July 1966, after a five-year field effort, they reached a depth of 1387 meters. 1 One of us (Langway) was responsible for developing the international study program for the Camp Century ice core. 2
The Hansen crew also drilled the second ice core ever to reach bottom ice, in January 1968, at a depth of 2164 meters, from Byrd Station, Antarctica. 1 Both core drillings were extensions of the successful US International Geophysical Year projects in Greenland and Antarctica (1957–58) to deep-core drill into polar ice sheets for scientific purposes. 3 The IGY studies were proposed, initiated, and led by Henri Bader, chief scientist, under an interagency agreement with NSF.
It was data obtained in these early drilling projects that ultimately led to the discovery of rapid climate changes and served as the foundation and justification for the follow-up international, multidisciplinary Greenland Ice Sheet Program by researchers from the US, Denmark, and Switzerland. 4,5 It was also during the final three years (1979–81) of the GISP 10-year field and laboratory investigation that Danish drilling participants, led by Niels Gunderstrup and Sigfus Johnson, augered the 2037-meter-deep third ice core to reach the bottom of the ice sheet at Dye-3, in August 1981.
