When the Ice is Gone (WW Norton, 2024) is new book about US Military geoscience in Greenland, focused at the height of the Cold War. The book, grounded in both science and history, has as its protagonist, the first deep ice core, drilled nearly a mile through the Greenland Ice Sheet by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Getting the core was an unprecedented a feat never been attempted or achieved. It took dozens of scientists, engineers and enlisted men six years working at a remote base, Camp Century, an outpost for 200 built inside the ice sheet and powered by a nuclear reactor. Their work was the culmination of nearly 20 years of military science on the ice starting before World War 2.
The most important parts of the core (the very bottom of the ice and almost 12 feet of frozen soil from below) were lost in the 1990s. When they reappeared in 2018, found frozen solid in Copenhagen, those samples were the catalyst that allowed an international team of scientists to parse out our collective future as climate change melts Earth’s ice and sea level rises.
Written by Paul Bierman, a geologist and environmental historian at the University of Vermont, When the Ice is Gone traces the military history of Greenland from the first explorers through to today. It interweaves stories of the island’s geology that includes some of the oldest rocks in the world and an ice sheet that has sent global sea level up and down more than 20 feet during the last several million years.
When the Ice is Gone (WW Norton, 2024) is available in bookstores and online (Amazon). It was featured in a New York Times Q&A and is a New Yorker Best Book of the year.
Note from Secretary: Having worked in Greenland, and with a passion for all matters subterranean, and the emerging geopolitical wrangling over the island’s future, I can highly recommend this book!