Allllals of Glaciology 10 1988 © International Glaciological Society SEASONAL VARIATIONS IN HYDROGEN PEROXIDE IN POLAR ICE CORES

Hydrogen peroxide is present in polar snow and ice in remarkably high concentrations. With values up to 300 ppb, H20 2 is one of the most concentrated impurities in polar ice. We present a continuous H20 2 firn record from Siple Station (Antarctica); it covers the last 83 years with a resolution of...

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Main Authors: Andreas Sigg, Albrecht Neftel
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
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Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.475.7059
http://www.igsoc.org:8080/annals/10/igs_annals_vol10_year1988_pg157-162.pdf
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Summary:Hydrogen peroxide is present in polar snow and ice in remarkably high concentrations. With values up to 300 ppb, H20 2 is one of the most concentrated impurities in polar ice. We present a continuous H20 2 firn record from Siple Station (Antarctica); it covers the last 83 years with a resolution of 10-20 samples per year. A very strong seasonality is present in this record. This seasonality is also observed in a Greenland ice core from Dye 3, where we have continuously measured the top 10 m with the same resolution. The maximum concentrations correspond to summer snow layers and can exceed winter snow concentrations by a factor of 10. This property makes H20 2 a useful tracer for dating suitable cores by counting annual layers. The different steps needed to relate the atmospheric to the ice-core H20 2 concentration are discussed. As with isotopic tracers, diffusion in the firn smooths the original H 20 2 concentration profile.