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

• Published in: Geosciences
• Main Authors: Kirstin Hoffmann-Abdi, Francisco Fernandoy, Hanno Meyer, Johannes Freitag, Thomas Opel, Joseph R. McConnell, Christoph Schneider
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic Peninsula; firn cores; stable water isotopes; glacio-chemistry; high accumulation; surface melt; Geology; QE1-996.5; Antarctic; Austral; Amundsen Sea; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice cap; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11100428; https://doaj.org/article/ce96a0c3f0d44a93b0c3f470d485ea13

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 δ 18 O, 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 large-scale warm-air advection from lower latitudes and temporal variations in sea ice extent in the Bellingshausen-Amundsen Sea. The LCL ice cap is a highly valuable natural archive since it captures regional meteorological and environmental signals as well as their connection to the South American continent.