National Ice Core Laboratory
Encyclopedia
Denver Federal Center
Denver Federal Center is located in Lakewood, Colorado and is the home to about 6,200 employees for many Federal government of the United States agencies. The Denver Federal Center encompasses an area of about and has 90 buildings comprising over of office, warehouse, lab and special use space...
is the primary repository for ice core
Ice core
An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet, most commonly from the polar ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland or from high mountain glaciers elsewhere. As the ice forms from the incremental build up of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper, and an ice...
s collected by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The facility is managed by the United States Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...
(USGS), and jointly funded by the USGS, National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
, and the University of New Hampshire
University of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
. NICL currently houses ~14,000 m of ice cores collected from Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
and Antarctica, including the GISP2, Siple Dome
Siple Dome
Siple Dome is an ice dome approximately 100 km wide and 100 km long, located 130 km east of Siple Coast. Charles Bentley and Robert Thomas established a "strain rosette" on this feature to determine ice movement in 1973-74. They referred to the feature as Siple Dome because of its...
, and portions of the Vostok
Vostok
Vostok may refer to one of the following.Spaceflight*The Soviet Vostok programme of human spaceflight.*The Vostok spacecraft used in that programme and also the basis of a reconnaissance satellite.*The Vostok rocket, used to launch the Vostok spacecraft....
cores. The facility is also the lead organization for the handling and storage of the upcoming West Antarctic Ice Sheet
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains which lies in the Western Hemisphere. The WAIS is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well...
ice core.
In addition to providing a large storage facility, maintained at -35 °C
Celsius
Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...
, NICL also has one of the largest sub-zero research and sample preparation spaces in the world. NICL is responsible for distributing samples of ice cores in their collection to researchers around the world, following approved research proposals.
In addition to research activities, NICL also participates in public outreach and gives ~100 tours per year.