Five days ago, the rainy season started in Ethiopia and the ecosystems in the rift-valley began to bloom again. Almost just in time, Frank Schäbitz and his team left the dry drilling site of the ICDP/HSPDP in Chew Bahir.

In only five days of drilling, they reached a depth of 41.50 m below lake floor and most likely retrieved a sediment record well beyond Eemian times, indicated by a distinct change in sediment colour. Unfortunately, the team had to take a down time of two days due to technical problems and at the same time, the beginning of the rainy season hindered the team to continue their successful coring run. Thus, future analyses will concentrate only on core segments from the first bore hole. For now, all team members are back in Addis Ababa, preparing the export of the sample material that is expected to be available in Cologne already next week.

Last but not least, the expectations are high to decipher continuous palaeoenvironmental/climatic signals in the new core material for the last 200 ka and retrieve geo-data that are matching with archaeological findings from project A1.

We are looking forward to welcome our team back in Cologne.

After the sun dried up the first heavy rains of the season, it was time to disassemble the rig and withdraw from the centre of the lake. Photo: Frank Schäbitz

The exhausted drilling team is on shore again after seven days of successful coring. Photo: Frank Schäbitz