Short-Term Meteorological and Environmental Signals Recorded in a Firn Core from a High-Accumulation Site on Plateau Laclavere, Antarctic Peninsula ...

• Main Authors: Hoffmann-Abdi, Kirstin, Fernandoy, Francisco, Meyer, Hanno, Freitag, Johannes, Opel, Thomas, McConnell, Joseph R., Schneider, Christoph
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic Peninsula; firn cores; stable water isotopes; glacio-chemistry; high accumulation; surface melt; 550 Geowissenschaften; Antarctic; Austral; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.18452/23872; https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/24530

High-accumulation sites are crucial for understanding the patterns and mechanisms of climate and environmental change in Antarctica since they allow gaining high-resolution proxy records from firn and ice. Here, we present new glacio- and isotope-geochemical data at sub-annual resolution from a firn core retrieved from an ice cap on Plateau Laclavere (LCL), northern Antarctic Peninsula, covering the period 2012–2015. The signals of two volcanic eruptions and two forest fire events in South America could be identified in the non-sea-salt sulphur and black carbon records, respectively. Mean annual snow accumulation on LCL amounts to 2500 kg m−2 a−1 and exhibits low inter-annual variability. Time series of δ18O, δD and d excess show no seasonal cyclicity, which may result from (1) a reduced annual temperature amplitude due to the maritime climate and (2) post-depositional processes. The firn core stratigraphy indicates strong surface melt on LCL during austral summers 2013 and 2015, likely related to ...