Possible Icelandic Tephra Found in European Colle Gnifetti Glacier ...

• Main Authors: Luongo, M. T., Kurbatov, A. V., Erhardt, T., Mayewski, P. A., McCormick, M., More, A. F., Spaulding, N. E., Wheatley, S. D., Yates, M. G., Bohleber, P. D.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union AGU 2017
• Subjects: 530 Physics; ice core
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.112655; https://boris.unibe.ch/112655/

Volcanic ash (tephra) provides unique time markers (isochrons) that are often used as an independent age-control tool for stratigraphic correlations of paleoclimate archives from ice cores. However, little credence has been given to the notion of finding tephra in ice cores collected in the European Alps because of the relatively large distance from volcanic sources and the presumed nature of regional atmospheric circulation patterns. We filtered particles from melted ice core drilling chips gathered roughly every meter during a 2013 drilling operation at Colle Gnifetti glacier in the Swiss-Italian Alps (45°55.74'N, 7°52.58'E, 4450 m asl). One filter, preliminarily dated to the nineteenth century by annual layer counting, contained a group of six visually similar tephra particles. Analyzing their chemistry using a scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometer established that the six particles were volcanic in origin and are very similar in composition (a distinctive ...