This award is in support of the second Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP II). The objective of GISP II is the retrieval and analysis of a deep ice core from central Greenland. Deep ice cores from polar regions provide key paleoclimate data sets because they bridge the time scale gap between other proxy records with annual resolution, but relatively short time scales, and those which have a resolution of hundreds to thousands of years. This award will assure efficient and timely access to ice core data as they become available, as well as provide for the safe, long-term, archival of key data through the design and implementation of a comprehensive data accession and archival system for ice core data. National Snow and Ice Data Center will provide data management and archiving services to ensure efficient and centralized access to the total data set and the permanent retention of key data. Because of the widespread and increasing interest in paleoclimate and global change, these data sets will be used not only by GISP II, but there will be an ever increasing demand from fields outside glaciology for this type of data.
