First results from the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice pre-site survey in the Dome Fuji region, Antarctica
The Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice (BE-OI) consortium and its international partners unite a globally unique concentration of scientific expertise and infrastructure for ice-core investigations. It delivers the technical, scientific and financial basis for a comprehensive plan to retrieve an ice core up to 1.5 million years old. The consortium takes care of the pre-site surveys for site selection around Dome C and Dome Fuji, both potentially appropriate regions in East Antarctica. Other science consortia will investigate other regions under the umbrella of the International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS). In this contribution we present first results from the extensive airborneradar survey at the Dome Fuji region, recently obtained in the 2016/17 Antarctic field season. This enables us to confirm and reject earlier estimates on the presence of old ice, potentially more than 1 Ma old, in this region.