Chronostratigraphy of the Larsen blue-ice area in northern Victoria Land, East Antarctica, and its implications for paleoclimate

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: Lee, Giyoon, Ahn, Jinho, Ju, Hyeontae, Ritterbusch, Florian, Oyabu, Ikumi, Buizert, Christo, Kim, Songyi, Moon, Jangil, Ghosh, Sambit, Kawamura, Kenji, Lu, Zheng-Tian, Hong, Sangbum, Han, Chang Hee, Hur, Soon Do, Jiang, Wei, Yang, Guo-Min
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Bia; East Antarctica; Victoria Land; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-2301-2022; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/2301/2022/

In blue-ice areas (BIAs), deep ice is directly exposed at the surface, allowing for the cost-effective collection of large-sized old-ice samples. However, chronostratigraphic studies on blue-ice areas are challenging owing to fold and fault structures. Here, we report on a surface transect of ice with an undisturbed horizontal stratigraphy from the Larsen BIA, northern Victoria Land, East Antarctica. Ice layers defined by dust bands and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys indicate a monotonic increase in age along the ice flow direction on the downstream side, while the upstream ice exhibits a potential repetition of ages on scales of tens of meters, which result from a complicated fold structure. Stable water isotopes ( δ 18 O ice and δ 2 H ice ) and components of the occluded air (i.e., CO 2 , N 2 O, CH 4 , δ 15 N–N 2 , δ 18 O atm ( = δ 18 O-O 2 ), δ <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M15" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow class="chem"><msub><mi mathvariant="normal">O</mi><mn mathvariant="normal">2</mn></msub><mo>/</mo><msub><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn mathvariant="normal">2</mn></msub></mrow></math> <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="34pt" height="14pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="b1374199d4ad746bc8cf74082403b011"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="tc-16-2301-2022-ie00001.svg" width="34pt" height="14pt" src="tc-16-2301-2022-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg> , δ <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M17" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow class="chem"><mi mathvariant="normal">Ar</mi><mo>/</mo><msub><mi mathvariant="normal">N</mi><mn mathvariant="normal">2</mn></msub></mrow></math> <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="32pt" ...