Refractory black carbon (rBC) concentrations in an ice core from Devon ice cap, Devon Island, Nunavut ...

• Main Authors: Zdanowicz, Christian, Edwards, Ross, Feiteng, Wang, Fisher, David, Hogan, Chad, Kinnard, Christophe, Proemse, Bernadette
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Canadian Cryospheric Information Network 2018
• Subjects: albedo; black carbon; Devon Island; Greenland; Greenland ice cores; Ice cap; ice core; Nunavut
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.21963/12952; https://www.polardata.ca/pdcsearch/PDCSearchDOI.jsp?doi_id=12952

Black carbon aerosol (BC) emitted from natural and anthropogenic sources (e.g., wildfires, coal burning) can contribute to magnify climate warming at high latitudes by darkening snow- and ice-covered surfaces, thus lowering their albedo. Modelling the atmospheric transport and deposition of BC to the Arctic is therefore important, and historical archives of BC accumulation in polar ice can help to validate such modelling efforts. Here we present a >250-year ice-core record of refractory BC (rBC) deposition on Devon ice cap, Canada, spanning the years 1735-1992, the first such record ever developed from the Canadian Arctic. Mass concentrations of rBC in the ice core were measured at annual to sub-annual resolution by the single-particle intracavity laser-induced incandescence photometer (sp2) method. The estimated mean deposition flux of rBC on Devon ice cap for 1963-1990 is 0.2 mg m^-2 a^-1, which is at the low end of estimates from Greenland ice cores obtained by the same analytical method (~0.1-4 mg ... : A record of black carbon aerosol deposition, spanning the years 1735-1992, was developed from an ice core drilled on Devon ice cap, Nunavut, to be used as a proxy to document historical changes of radiative forcing by short-lived aerosols in the Canadian High Arctic. ...