Planet Earth Online

Drilling the seabed for climate secrets

Updated: 5 May 2009

The expedition is part of the Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT) programme. Researchers will use the sediment samples to reconstruct the Pacific Ocean's climate history over the last 55 million years.

A better understanding of how the climate system has switched between warm and cold and back again through this time should in turn aid prediction of future climate change.

The mission will draw on the capabilities of the US drillship JOIDES Resolution (pictured), which will float unanchored and drill into the seabed kilometres below.

Doing so is an extraordinary feat of marine engineering - it has been compared to standing at the top of the Empire State Building and attempting to drill into the pavement at street level using a drill as thick as a piece of spaghetti.

Natural Environment Research Council-funded scientists are on the JOIDES Resolution, and they'll be providing updates on life on board and on scientific discoveries as they happen. Watch this space for updates.

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11 May 2009

• Paul Bown: Back on dry land! (0)

  We are finally back on land at the end of our expedition, after two months at sea.

5 May 2009

• Peter Fitch: Making wiggles - life with the physical properties of deep sea sediments! (0)

  I am currently a 4th year PhD student at the University of Leicester.

15 April 2009

• Heiko Pälike: Plate tectonics works! (0)

  We have just arrived at the last coring Site for this Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition ("PEAT-6C", from today also know as Site U1335), with three more planned as part of this science programme for our colleagues on the next Expedition.

3 April 2009

• Kirsty Edgar: The day of a shipboard micropalaeontologist (0)

  After five days on site, today we finished drilling at Site 2 (PEAT-2) and are now on our way to Site 3, about 48 km south of our current position. The transit provides us with a brief respite from the organised chaos of coring.

26 March 2009

• Tom Dunkley Jones: Of coccoliths and climate (0)

  One of the effects of being on board ship - especially for those on the night shift, midnight to noon, who breakfast one day (11.45pm) and turn up to work the next (midnight) - is a lost sense of days, dates and weeks.

21 March 2009

• Paul Bown: Core on deck! (0)

  We have just completed the drilling at our first site (Site U1331). It's taken us a week and we've drilled three separate holes, just to make sure we have a complete record.

15 March 2009

• Paul Bown: At last - our first sea floor cores (0)

  After five days of sailing through relatively calm seas and good weather we have finally arrived at the location of our first drill site (12 degrees North of the Equator).

10 March 2009

• Paul Bown: Off to sea (0)

  Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 320 set sail yesterday from Honolulu, Hawaii at 3 pm. Our objective is to drill five long sediment cores from the Pacific Ocean sea-floor, each around 200 metre in depth.