Compilation of stable isotope data from East Antarctic snow pits and firn cores ...

• Main Authors: Laepple, Thomas, Münch, Thomas, Casado, Mathieu, Hörhold, Maria, Landais, Amaëlle, Kipfstuhl, Sepp
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2017
• Subjects: Ice drill; Estimating climate variability by quantifying proxy uncertainty and synthesizing information across archives @ AWI AWI_ECUS; Glaciology @ AWI AWI_Glac; Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems @ AWI AWI_Envi; Space-time structure of climate change @ AWI AWI_SPACE; Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctica; East Antarctica
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.883787; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.883787

Stable water isotopes in polar ice provide a wealth of information about past climate evolution. Snow-pit studies allow us to relate observed weather and climate conditions to the measured isotope variations in the snow. They therefore offer the possibility to test our understanding of how isotope signals are formed and stored in firn and ice. As stable water isotopes in the snowfall are strongly correlated to air temperature, isotopes in the near-surface snow are thought to record the seasonal cycle at a given site. Accordingly, the number of seasonal cycles observed over a given depth should depend on the accumulation rate of snow. However, snow-pit studies from different accumulation conditions in East Antarctica reported similar isotopic variability and comparable apparent cycles in the d18 O and dD profiles with typical wavelengths of ~ 20cm. These observations are unexpected as the accumulation rates strongly differ between the sites, ranging from 20 to 80mm w.e. yr -1 (~ 6-21cm of snow per year). ... : Supplement to: Laepple, Thomas; Münch, Thomas; Casado, Mathieu; Hörhold, Maria; Landais, Amaëlle; Kipfstuhl, Sepp (2018): On the similarity and apparent cycles of isotopic variations in East Antarctic snow pits. The Cryosphere, 12(1), 169-187 ...