Exploiting the Greenland volcanic ash repository to date caldera-forming eruptions and widespread isochrons during the Holocene

Abstract

Polar ice-cores have long been recognised as unrivalled repositories of past volcanic events. Although tephra products from local eruptions tend to dominate these records, improvements in micro-sampling and analytical techniques are uncovering a growing number of cryptotephras erupted from exceptionally distant volcanoes. We present a series of nine Middle Holocene cryptotephra deposits detected within the NGRIP ice-core that originate from five different volcanic regions across the Northern Hemisphere (Alaska, Cascades, Iceland, Japan, Kamchatka). Unique compositional signatures are employed to identify ash from three large caldera-forming events in Kamchatka (KS2 from Ksudach), the Cascades (Mazama) and North East Japan (Mashu), along with ash from the Hekla 4 eruption in Iceland. High-precision ice-core ages (adopting a 1950 CE datum for the GICC05 timescale assigned to the Greenland ice cores) are derived for each eruption: Hekla 4 (4325 ± 8 a b1.95k), KS2 (7089 ± 26 a b1.95k), Mashu (i-f) (7473 ± 33 a b1.95k) and Mazama (7562 ± 35 a b1.95k), all of which can be employed as chronological fix-points in other proxy records where these deposits are also preserved. Four further cryptotephra deposits and one macro-deposit are also identified and traced to sources in Iceland and Alaska. The cryptotephra originating from Alaska is correlated to a deposit identified in lake records from the Kenai Peninsula, thought to originate from Redoubt Volcano. The remaining four deposits are typical of the products of Katla, Grímsvötn and Veiðivötn in Iceland. This ensemble of Middle Holocene tephra deposits highlights the pivotal position of the Greenland ice-sheet and its ice-cores to capture deposition from the convergence of several far-travelled ash clouds. Precise age estimates derived from the annually resolved ice-core record greatly enhances the value of these tephra isochrons.