Two EPICA ice cores revealing 800,000 years of climate history: an overview.

Two deep ice cores had been drilled within the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA). The first core from Dome C reached a depth of 3260 m covering a time period of about 800,000 years. The second core from Dronning Maud Land (DML), drilled at Kohnen-Station, reached 2774 m depth wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Oerter, Hans, Epicateam
Format: Conference Object
Language:unknown
Published: 2008
Subjects:
DML
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/18400/
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/18400/1/Oer2008a.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.30040
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.30040.d001
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Summary:Two deep ice cores had been drilled within the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA). The first core from Dome C reached a depth of 3260 m covering a time period of about 800,000 years. The second core from Dronning Maud Land (DML), drilled at Kohnen-Station, reached 2774 m depth with an estimated age of approximately 300,000 years. Measurements of stable isotopes (oxygen-18, deuterium) reveal climatic variations over 8 glacial cycles. Synchronisation with the deep Greenland ice cores was possible by using the records of methane. A general correspondence was assessed between Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the North and their smoothed Antarctic counterparts, the so-called Antarctic Isotope Maxima (AIM). This was most evident in the DML ice core, as it shows an higher temporal resolution during the past 80,000 years than the Dome C ice core. However, such features with similar amplitude are also present in the deeper part of the Dome C ice core. It is likely that the interplay between obliquity and precession accounts for the variable intensity of interglacial periods in the ice-core records.