Brief communication: Identification of 140 000-year-old blue ice in the Grove Mountains, East Antarctica, by krypton-81 dating

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Hu, Zhengyi, Jiang, Wei, Yan, Yuzhen, Huang, Yan, Tang, Xueyuan, Li, Lin, Ritterbusch, Florian, Yang, Guo-Min, Lu, Zheng-Tian, Shi, Guitao
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctica; East Antarctica; Princess Elizabeth Land; West Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-1647-2024; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/18/1647/2024/

The presence of exceptionally old ice and relative ease of access make Antarctic blue-ice areas (BIAs) attractive paleoclimate archives. However, only a handful of BIAs, mostly situated in West Antarctica and along the Transantarctic Mountains, have been investigated for this purpose. Here, we present the age of surface ice from the Grove Mountains BIA in Princess Elizabeth Land, East Antarctica, determined by measuring 81 Kr in the trapped air. Two samples yield an average age of 143 - 29 + 33 <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="35pt" height="17pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="ad30d90ec066907e65f6835051c718bd"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="tc-18-1647-2024-ie00001.svg" width="35pt" height="17pt" src="tc-18-1647-2024-ie00001.png"/> </svg:svg> kyr. Together with the reported terrestrial age of a chondrite, we conclude that the Grove Mountains BIA holds considerable potential for paleoclimate studies.