Stratigraphic templates for ice core records of the past 1.5 Myr ...

• Main Authors: Wolff, EW, Fischer, H, Van Ommen, T, Hodell, DA
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus GmbH 2022
• Subjects: 37 Earth Sciences; 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; 3703 Geochemistry; 3705 Geology; 14 Life Below Water; New Zealand; Antarc*; Antarctica; EPICA; ice core
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.86702; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/339294

Abstract. The international ice core community has a target to obtain continuous ice cores stretching back as far as 1.5 Myr. This would provide vital data (including a CO2 profile) allowing us to assess ideas about the cause of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT). The European Beyond EPICA project and the Australian Million Year Ice Core project each plan to drill such a core in the region known as Little Dome C. Dating the cores will be challenging, and one approach will be to match some of the records obtained with existing marine sediment datasets, informed by similarities in the existing 800 kyr period. Water isotopes in Antarctica have been shown to closely mirror deepwater temperature, estimated from Mg/Ca ratios of benthic foraminifera, in a marine core on the Chatham Rise near to New Zealand. The dust record in ice cores resembles very closely a South Atlantic marine record of iron accumulation rate. By assuming these relationships continue beyond 800 ka, our ice core record could be synchronised ...