Siberian Ice-Core Records
Ice core from Akademii Nauk Ice Cap (Severnaya Zemlya, Siberian Arctic) – bottom part.
Ice cores are some of the best palaeoclimate archives providing unique information about the physical and chemical properties of the atmosphere. Climate of Greenland and Antarctica was reconstructed for one or more ice age cycles by ice-core data. Between 1999 and 2001, a 724 m long surface-to-bed ice core was drilled on Akademii Nauk ice cap, the thickest and coldest one on Severnaya Zemlya, to gain high-resolution proxy data from the Central Russian Arctic.
Electrical conductivity measurements (DEP) and stable water isotope analyzes in high resolution were used for core dating resulting in an age of about 2500 years for Akademii Nauk ice cap. For last 150 years stable isotope record is highly correlated with temperature measured in north Norway (Vardø). High-resolution chemical analysis of the upper core part show high concentrations of sulphate and nitrate in the 1970s caused by high anthropogenic emissions in the Siberian Arctic.
Funding
BMBF 1999-2002 – drilling, first analyzes, and dating of core
Working Group
- Dr. Diedrich Fritzsche, Group Leader
- Dr. Rainer Schütt, Physicist
- Thomas Opel, PhD Student
Contributions from other AWI working groups
- Dr. Hanno Meyer, Stable Isotopes
- Dr. Frank Wilhelms, AWI Glaciology, Physicist, dielectrical profiling (DEP)
- Dr. Hubertus Fischer, AWI Glaciology, Physicist, ice chemistry
Participating institutions
- Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), St.Petersburg, Russia
- St. Petersburg State Mining Institute, Russia
- Dept. des Science de la Terre et Environement, Section Glaciologie, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
