A shallow ice core from East Greenland showing a reduction in black carbon during 1990–2016

This study reports on the measurements of ion and refractory black carbon (rBC) concentrations in a shallow (10.96 m) ice core sample which was drilled from the field site of the East Greenland Ice Core Project (EGRIP) in July, 2016. The results provide a recent record of rBC deposition in the East...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in Climate Change Research
Main Authors: Zhi-Heng Du, Cun-De Xiao, Ting-Feng Dou, Chuan-Jin Li, Ming-Hu Ding, Sangeeta Sharma, Xiang-Yu Ma, Shi-Meng WANG, Wang-Bin Zhang
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. 2020
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2020.11.009
https://doaj.org/article/f60f0b17aabf463c9656e6b246491452
Description
Summary:This study reports on the measurements of ion and refractory black carbon (rBC) concentrations in a shallow (10.96 m) ice core sample which was drilled from the field site of the East Greenland Ice Core Project (EGRIP) in July, 2016. The results provide a recent record of rBC deposition in the East Greenland ice sheet from 1990 to 2016. The annual variability in oxygen (δ18O) and hydrogen (δD) isotopic compositions indicated that notably warm events occurred since 2008. Peaks in rBC occurred during summer seasons, which may be attributed to the burning of biomass in boreal summer. The rBC record and analysis of historical air trajectories using the HYSPLIT model indicated that anthropogenic BC emissions from Russia, North America and Europe contributed to the majority of rBC deposition in the Greenland region, and a reduction in anthropogenic BC consumption in these areas played a dominant role in the decrease in BC concentrations since 2000. This record also suggests that the emissions from the East Asian region (China) contributed very little to the recorded BC concentrations in East Greenland ice core. The model results indicated that radiative forcing due to BC had decreased significantly since 1990, and had remained below 0.02 W m−2 since 2000.