The climatic and environmental features on both sides of the Lambert Glacier Basin

Abstract

During the 1992–1993 joint Australian-Chinese over-snow traverse of the western Lambert Glacier Basin (LGB), two firn cores were drilled respectively at MGA and LGB16. During the 1996–1997 and 1997–1998 austral summers, two firn cores were drilled respectively at DT001 and DT085 on the eastern LGB. Based on the measurements made during the expeditions, the climatic and environmental features on both sides of the LGB have been studied. Results show that during the past 50 years, the trends of both air temperature and accumulation rate show a slight increase on the east side of the LGB, in contrast to the west side of the LGB. The spatial trends of the accumulation rate measured by accumulation canes at 2 km intervals along the nearly 500 km of the traverse lines on both sides of the LGB are different. Moreover, correlations of δ18O vsT10along the two sides of the LGB are also different. In addition, the variations of sea salt ion concentrations show different trends in the past 50 years. All the evidence shows that the Lambert Glacier is a dividing region for the different climatic regimes over the East Antarctic ice sheet, which may be due to different moisture resources resulting from special local circumfluence such as cyclone activities, local terrain influences.