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Cold Storage (Ice Core)

Our cold storage building contains two 30' by 35' freezer compartments with rack-type storage units which are maintained at -30° to -40°C and can hold about 3,000 meters of frozen ice cores. The freezer facility has three main compressors and a backup compressor and a gas-powered system consisting of a generator (shown in photo on the left). Ice core processing such as the cutting and pre-preparation of samples for lab analyses as well as various analytical measurements on solid ice such as stratigraphy and structure studies (photos below), are conducted in the two cold labs (-10°C) attached to the deep (-30°F) storage unit.