Mount Hunter (Denali National Park) Alaska ice core radiocarbon (14-Carbon) data, 2013

• Main Author: Karl Kreutz
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2020
• Subjects: Ice core; Alaska; chronology; radiocarbon; glaciers; paleoclimate; Holocene; Arctic; Yukon; Pacific; Mount Hunter; ice core
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2BZ6183N

Investigation of North Pacific climate variability during warm intervals outside of the Common Era is essential for addressing questions regarding ocean-atmosphere teleconnections between low latitudes and the Arctic under future warming scenarios. However, most of existing ice cores extracted from Alaska/Yukon region archive climate information from the last few centuries. This dataset contains radiocarbon (14C) data from a 208 meter surface-to-bedrock ice core recovered from the summit plateau of Mt. Hunter in central Alaska in 2013. By applying radiocarbon dating on carbonaceous aerosols, a continuous depth-age relationship has been established in the Mt. Hunter ice core. Calibrated 14C ages from the two lowest samples (7,946-10,226 cal BP and 7,018-7,975 cal BP) indicate that basal ice on Mt. Hunter has an early Holocene (> 8 kyr) origin. We also show that samples from depth of 161.0-166.1 m weq have nearly uniform 14C ages (3,200 to 3,500 cal BP). One possible explanation is an increase in snow accumulation at Mt. Hunter during regional neoglaciation. When paired with the Mt. Logan PRCol record, the only other Holocene-length ice core from North Pacific region, the Mt. Hunter ice core provides the possibility to investigate spatial changes in high-elevation Holocene hydroclimate.