| Summary: | Due to their temperature dependency, stable noble gases (He, Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe) have been routinely used as indicators of past climate in sedimentary systems for over four decades. However, noble gas studies in fractured systems, where infiltration is rapid, remain scarce. These include studies in ice sheets in old cratonic regions (e.g., Antarctica and Greenland), as well as old and recent volcanic areas such as the archipelagos of the Galapagos and Hawaii. Here, noble gas studies in fractured systems are presented. These include two studies in ice-covered regions, one in the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) and the other in the Athabasca Glacier (AG) of the Columbia Icefield in the Canadian Rockies, as well as two studies in a tropical basaltic island, the Island of Maui, Hawaii. Noble gases in the GrIS (Chapter 2) and the AG (Chapter 3) studies are used to constrain glacial meltwater sources, water source altitude and water residence times. In Maui, noble gases are first used to characterize the different water sources contributing to groundwater recharge (e.g., fog, orographic and synoptic-scale rain), and to assess whether timing and location of recharge can be estimated based on atmospheric noble gas signatures (Chapter 4). In Chapter 5, the potential for noble gases to record temporal variations is assessed. Noble gases are used together with oxygen and hydrogen isotopic composition data to further constrain water source altitudes in Maui. Noble gases in the meltwater samples from both the GrIS and the AG are dominated by a partially equilibrated air-saturated water (ASW) component rather than trapped air in the glacial ice. Water source altitudes based on Xe range between 0.8 and 2.4 km for most samples from the GrIS and between 2.5 and 3.5 km for the AG. A crustal He component, observed in almost all samples in both studies, is used to estimate water residence times. Most meltwater samples from the GrIS yield water residence times between ~100 and ~400 years while two samples yield older ages of ~2000 and ...
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