On December 31, 2011, the drilling of the Antarctic WAIS Divide ice core was successfully completed. The DISC Drill produced excellent quality core over the entire 3,405 m depth, including through the technically challenging warm ice. This significant achievement was the culmination of over a decade of work including the design and construction of the DISC Drill by IDDO and its predecessor ICDS.
The ice core retrieved from the site is anticipated to yield the first high-resolution southern hemisphere record of greenhouse gases and climate comparable to the Greenland records, and will contribute significantly to improved understanding of climate variability over the last 62,000 years. Unlike the Greenland cores, however, the WAIS Divide ice core will also provide a record of carbon dioxide; and that record will have a higher time-resolution during the transition from the last glacial period to the current warm interval than any other existing ice core record.