Volcanism and the Greenland ice-cores: the tephra record

Abstract

In recent years, increased awareness of the considerable potential offered by tephrochronology in palaeoclimatic studies has fuelled a renewed interest in the tephra record preserved within the Greenland ice-cores. This renewal has occurred in tandem with the development of continuous flow analysis techniques, which provide high-resolution volcanic aerosol records. These chemical records are of considerable value for identifying tephra horizons composed of glass shards and also provide the basis for a new high-precision ice-core timescale, thus allowing ages to be assigned to volcanic events. Tephra horizons of glass shards in the ice-cores play a critical role for (1) testing and building chronological frameworks for the ice-cores and other sequences, (2) synchronising disparate palaeoclimatic sequences and testing phase relationships, (3) atmospheric pathway reconstruction, and (4) verifying the source of volcanic aerosol peaks. Here we review the results of over 25years of research into tephra horizons in the GRIP, GISP2 and NGRIP cores. We provide high-precision ages for horizons based on recently developed timescales and draw together geochemical characterisations of the products of 45 volcanic events deposited on the Greenland ice sheet and identified in the cores. There is a clear disparity between the number of volcanic aerosol peaks and the number of tephra horizons of glass shards identified thus far. However, this synthesis highlights the critical role of the Greenland ice-cores, firstly in the reconstruction of the history of Icelandic volcanic eruptions, and secondly the considerable value of some tephra horizons in facilitating the correlation of these key climatic archives to North Atlantic marine sequences. Other noteworthy issues include the potential of these cores to preserve tephra horizons from more distal volcanic sources such as North America, to resolve the debate surrounding the Thera eruption, and the observation that some tephra horizons are preserved within the ice without coeval volcanic aerosol signals.