Summary: | This proposal seeks to drill, analyze, and interpret a new ice core from the Renland Ice Cap (RECAP) on the eastern coast of Greenland. The project is collaborative between US researchers (T. Sowers, Penn State and J. White, Univ. Colorado, this proposal) and researchers in Denmark’s Center for Ice and Climate (led by B. Vinther) and Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany (led by S. Kipfsthul). US efforts described here will focus on gas concentrations and gas isotopes (Sowers) and ice isotopes (White). Primary objectives of this proposal are: 1) link the recent, rapid warming seen in Greenland over the past decade to the baseline record of the past few centuries, as well as the broader Holocene record; 2) provide, for the first time, high-quality records of gases and gas isotopes throughout the Holocene from a Greenland core, and test current theories about the evolution of greenhouse gases in the Holocene and the impact of humans on that evolution; 3) provide, for the first time, a record of ice isotopes at their highest possible resolution available in the ice record, which we hope will provide a high resolution record of Holocene sea ice near eastern Greenland, as well as a history of climate in this region going back into the last interglacial period.
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