Terrestrial chronologies from southern Greenland provide a detailed deglacial history of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). The northern GIS margin history, however, is less established. Here we present surface exposure ages from moraines associated with two large outlet glaciers, Petermann and Humboldt, in the northwestern sector of the GIS. These...
During the last glacial period atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature in Antarctica varied in a similar fashion on millennial time scales, but previous work indicates that these changes were gradual. In a detailed analysis of one event we now find that approximately half of the CO₂ increase that occurred during...
We report a decadally resolved record of atmospheric CO₂ concentration for the last 1000 years, obtained from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide shallow ice core. The most prominent feature of the pre-industrial period is a rapid ∼7 ppm decrease of CO₂ in a span of ∼20–50 years at...
Recent analysis of 38 globally distributed paleoclimatic records covering Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3) 60–26 ka demonstrated that the two leading empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) explaining the data are the Greenland ice-core signal (“northern” signal) and the Antarctic ice-core signal (“southern” signal). Here singular spectral analysis (SSA) is used...
We have reconstructed chronology for the disturbed bottom parts of the GRIP and GISP2 ice cores using the combined paleoatmospheric records of CH₄ concentration and δ¹⁸O[subscript atm] in the trapped gases. Our reconstructed ages for basal ice samples are based on comparison of published measurements of CH₄ and δ¹⁸O[subscript atm]...
We present a new high-precision, high-resolution record of atmospheric methane from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice core covering 1000–1800 C.E., a time period known as the late preindustrial Holocene (LPIH). The results are consistent with previous measurements from the Law Dome ice core, the only other high-resolution...
We undertook an interlaboratory comparison of techniques used to extract and analyze trapped gases in ice cores. The intercomparison included analyses of standard reference gases and samples of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) site. Concentrations of CO₂, CH₄, the δ¹⁸O of O₂, the δ¹⁵N of N₂,...
Using new and existing ice core CO₂ data from 65 ∼ 30 ka a new chronology for CO₂ is established and synchronized with Greenland ice core records to study how high latitude climate change and the carbon cycle were linked during the last glacial period. Atmospheric CO₂ rose several thousand...
The Holocene portion of the Siple Dome (Antarctica) ice core was
dated by interpreting the electrical, visual and chemical properties of the
were interpreted manually and with a computer algorithm.The algorithm
was adjusted to be consistent with atmospheric methane stratigraphic
(Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2) ice core, ¹⁰Be stratigraphic ties...
Interpretation of ice core trace gas records depends on an accurate understanding of the
processes that smooth the atmospheric signal in the firn. Much work has been done to understand the
processes affecting air transport in the open pores of the firn, but a paucity of data from air trapped...