This award supports the continued operation of the National Ice Core Laboratory Science Management Office (NICL SMO). NICL SMO serves as the primary point of contact for scientists interested in access to ice cores and is responsible for the coordination and facilitation of the Ice Core Working Group (ICWG), a group of scientists who represent ice core researchers and those in related disciplines whose research utilizes or applies to ice core research. The ICWG investigates a wide range of topics related to ice core research including scientific oversight of the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL), sample access and distribution, inventory, policy issues and the development of plans for future ice core activities. NICL SMO proposes to continue assisting the ICWG in working with the scientific community, developing reports, planning workshops, oversight of NICL operations and coordinating educational outreach activities. The intellectual merit of this activity is that ice cores play a critical role in the science of global climate change. NICL SMO fills a unique role in allowing investigators a central point of contact to find information on current research being done and how to access ice core samples. NICL SMO assists new investigators in techniques for extracting samples, suggesting the use of de-accessed ice for method development and is readily available for consultation. By providing this service to the scientific community NICL SMO helps to increase the dissemination of scientific information preserved in ice cores. In terms of broader impacts, ice core science addresses questions of human interest related to the earth's climate system including global warming, abrupt climate change, changes in sea level, and biogeochemical cycling, among others. The NICL-SMO provides a service to the ice core community and helps facilitate further research on ice cores. The data and interpretations derived from NICL's archive will give policymakers the information necessary to make better decisions and will therefore benefit society.
The Science Management Office (SMO) for the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, CO serves as the primary contact for scientist seeking ice cores for scientific studies. NICL curates over 18,000 meters of ice cores collected over the past 50 years by U.S researchers, most of who are funded by the National Science Foundation. Ice cores through polar ice sheets and mountain ice caps provide records of past environmental conditions that are remarkable and unique due to their extremely high temporal resolution and the large number of environmental variables recorded in the ice. Ice core records of environmental change are cornerstones of global change research, providing data necessary for evaluating the behavior of the earth system and our impact on it. The relevance and significance of work on ice cores is underscored by both the pervasiveness of ice core data in the global change literature and the significant public and political attention these data garner. Ice is a truly unique archive, preserving ancient atmosphere, DNA, organisms, and meteorites, recording temperatures, atmospheric dust and aerosols, and human impacts on the environment in detail and scope unequaled by any other medium. Over the course of this award the Office has allocated in excess of 13,000 samples for scientific discoveries from the NICL archive. We have also represented the ice core community in numerous talks at K-12 schools and public lectures, provided video and photographs for media and produced the bi-yearly "In-Depth" newsletter informing the community about ice coring research.
