Measurements of surface energy of air-hydrate crystals in Vostok ice core, Antarctica

• Main Authors: Tsutomu Uchida, Shinji Mae, Takeo Hondoh, Paul Duval, Volodya Ya. Lipenkov
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Government Industrial Development Laboratory/Department of Applied Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University/Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University/Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environnement, CNRS/The Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute 1993
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica; ice core; Polar meteorology and glaciology; Proceedings of the NIPR Symposium on Polar Meteorology and Glaciology
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=3773; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00003773/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=3773&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

Microscopic observations of thin sections of Vostok ice cores, Antarctica, showed that various shapes and sizes of air-hydrate crystals are located on the grain boundaries. The surface energy of air-hydrate crystal was measured on 41 crystals in 7 different depth ice cores. These measurements revealed that the surface energy of air-hydrate was almost constant at all depths below 1050m, and that the average ratio between the surface energy of air-hydrate and ice grain boundary energy was 0.97±0.19. The observations also showed that air-hydrate crystals acted as obstacles for ice grain boundary migration.