Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution Project (RICE): US Deep Ice Core Glaciochemistry Contribution (2011- 2014)

• Main Authors: Mayewski, Paul Andrew, Kreutz, Karl J., Kurbatov, Andrei V.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@UMaine 2011
• Subjects: Antarctic Glaciology; Climate Change; Glaciology; Arctic; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Ross Sea; West Antarctica; Amundsen Sea; Ross Ice Shelf; New Zealand; Roosevelt Island; Antarc*; Antarctica; Climate change; ice core; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelf; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/orsp_reports/370; https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1374&context=orsp_reports

This award supports a project to analyze a deep ice core which will be drilled by a New Zealand research team at Roosevelt Island. The objectives are to process the ice core at very high resolution to (a) better understand phasing sequences in Arctic/Antarctic abrupt climate change, even at the level of individual storm events; (b) determine the impact of changes in the Westerlies and the Amundsen Sea Low on past/present/future climate change; (c) determine how sea ice extent has varied in the area; (d) compare the response of West Antarctica climate to other regions during glacial/interglacial cycles; and (e) determine how climate of the Ross Sea Embayment changed during the transition from Ross Ice Sheet to Ross Ice Shelf. The intellectual merit of the RICE deep ice core project is that it is expected to provide a 30kyr long (and possibly 150kyr long) extremely high-resolution view of climate change in the Ross Sea Embayment Region and data essential to test and understand critical questions that have emerged as a consequence of the recent synthesis of Antarctic and Southern Ocean climate change presented in the Scientific Commission for Antarctic Research document: Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment (ACCE, 2009). Ice core processing and analysis will be performed jointly by University of Maine and the collaborators from New Zealand. Co-registered sampling for all chemical analyses will be accomplished by a joint laboratory effort at the IGNS NZ ice core facility using a continuous melter system developed by the University of Maine. The RICE deep ice core record will provide information necessary in unraveling the significance of multi-millennial underpinning for climate change and in the understanding of observed and projected climate change in light of current dramatic human impact on Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The broader impacts of the project include the fact that two CCI graduate students will be funded through the project, and will be involved in all aspects of field research, core ...