Representativeness and seasonality of major ion records derived from NEEM firn cores ...

The seasonal and annual representativeness of ionic aerosol proxies (among others, calcium, sodium, ammonium and nitrate) in various firn cores in the vicinity of the NEEM drill site in northwest Greenland have been assessed. Seasonal representativeness is very high as one core explains more than 60...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fischer, Hubertus, Schüpbach, Simon, Gfeller, Gideon, Mini, Olivia, Bigler, Matthias, Leuenberger, Daiana
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.7892/boris.61213
http://boris.unibe.ch/61213/
Description
Summary:The seasonal and annual representativeness of ionic aerosol proxies (among others, calcium, sodium, ammonium and nitrate) in various firn cores in the vicinity of the NEEM drill site in northwest Greenland have been assessed. Seasonal representativeness is very high as one core explains more than 60 % of the variability within the area. The inter-annual representativeness, however, can be substantially lower (depending on the species) making replicate coring indispensable to derive the atmospheric variability of aerosol species. A single core at the NEEM site records only 30 % of the inter-annual atmospheric variability in some species, while five replicate cores are already needed to cover approximately 70 % of the inter-annual atmospheric variability in all species. The spatial representativeness is very high within 60 cm, rapidly decorrelates within 10 m but does not diminish further within 3 km. We attribute this to wind reworking of the snow pack leading to sastrugi formation. Due to the high resolution ...