| Summary: | Meteorological data and images collected on the Mt. Hunter plateau, Denali National Park, Alaska. Data were collected with an automatic weather station using instrumentation from Campbell Scientific. Large-scale atmospheric circulation systems affect the geographic distribution of precipitation in western North America, yet little is known about how these systems may have varied before the instrumental period of the last 150 years. The main goal of this project is to reconstruct the history of precipitation in Alaska during the last thousand years using ice core records of snow accumulation. The researchers plan to collect several new ice cores from the Mt. Hunter Plateau in the Alaska Range of Denali National Park and the new ice cores will be combined with an existing spatial array of ice cores in the region to map changes in the spatial patterns of precipitation. Because changes in atmospheric circulation patterns caused by ENSO and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) affect where the precipitation falls, this spatial array of ice cores will provide a record of how these larger scale climate systems have varied during the last thousand years. The project will focus on determining the differences in the precipitation patterns at the Little Ice Age (approximately 200 to 600 years ago) and Medieval Climate Anomaly (approximately 800 to 1,200 years ago).
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