Abstract
Abstract. Central East Antarctic ice cores preserve stratigraphic records of mineral dust originating from remote sources in the Southern Hemisphere, and represent useful indicators of climatic variations on glacial-interglacial time scales. The peripheries of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, where ice-free areas with the potential to emit dust exist, have been less explored from this point of view. Here, we present a new profile of dust deposition flux and grain size distributions from an ice core drilled at Talos Dome (TALDICE, Northern Victoria Land, East Antarctica), where there is a significant input of dust from proximal Antarctic ice-free areas. We analyze dust and stable water isotopes variations from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Late Holocene, and compare them to the EPICA Dome C profiles from central East Antarctica. The smaller glacial-interglacial variations at Talos Dome compared to Dome C and a distinctive decreasing trend during the Holocene characterize the TALDICE dust profile. By deciphering the composite dust signal from both remote and local sources, we show the potential of this combined proxy of source activity and atmospheric transport to give information on both regional and larger spatial scales. In particular, we show how a regional signal, which we relate to the deglaciation history of the Ross Sea embayment, can be superimposed to the broader scale glacial-interglacial variability that characterizes other Antarctic sites.
Highlights
Mineral dust is an active component of the climate system, interacting directly and indirectly with solar radiation, clouds and biogeochemistry (IPCC, 2007)
We present here a new mineral dust record spanning the period from 2 to 23 kyr Before Present, obtained from the TALos Dome Ice CorE drilling project (TALDICE)
We present and analyze a higher resolution dust record, and in light of previous works (Delmonte et al, 2010a, b), we carry out a closer inspection of dust flux and grain size variability with respect to the TALDICE stable water isotopes (δ18O) profile, and compare this profile to EPICA Dome C (EDC), which is assumed to be representative of CEAP sites
Summary
Mineral dust is an active component of the climate system, interacting directly and indirectly with solar radiation, clouds and biogeochemistry (IPCC, 2007). It is emitted by the action of wind stress on arid or semiarid areas, with low vegetation cover and the capacity of accumulating fine-grained material (Prospero et al, 2002); as such, dust source areas may vary both in terms of activity and geographical location or in size in response to environmental changes. Dust records from polar ice cores have been shown to be very reliable indicators of climate variability on glacialinterglacial time scales (Fuhrer et al, 1999; Lambert et al, 2008).
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