The volcanic record in ice cores for the past 2000 years

Author(s):  
Alan Robock ◽  
Melissa P. Free
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 809-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Zennaro ◽  
N. Kehrwald ◽  
J. R. McConnell ◽  
S. Schüpbach ◽  
O. Maselli ◽  
...  

Abstract. Biomass burning is a major source of greenhouse gases and influences regional to global climate. Pre-industrial fire-history records from black carbon, charcoal and other proxies provide baseline estimates of biomass burning at local to global scales, but there remains a need for broad-scale fire proxies that span millennia in order to understand the role of fire in the carbon cycle and climate system. We use the specific biomarker levoglucosan, and multi-source black carbon and ammonium concentrations to reconstruct fire activity from the North Greenland Eemian (NEEM) ice cores (77.49° N; 51.2° W, 2480 m a.s.l.) over the past 2000 years. Increases in boreal fire activity (1000–1300 CE and 1500–1700 CE) over multi-decadal timescales coincide with the most extensive central and northern Asian droughts of the past two millennia. The NEEM biomass burning tracers coincide with temperature changes throughout much of the past 2000 years except for during the extreme droughts, when precipitation changes are the dominant factor. Many of these multi-annual droughts are caused by monsoon failures, thus suggesting a connection between low and high latitude climate processes. North America is a primary source of biomass burning aerosols due to its relative proximity to the NEEM camp. During major fire events, however, isotopic analyses of dust, back-trajectories and links with levoglucosan peaks and regional drought reconstructions suggest that Siberia is also an important source of pyrogenic aerosols to Greenland.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Vladimirova ◽  
Elizabeth Thomas ◽  
on behalf of CLIVASH2k

<p>Trends in sea ice extent and atmospheric circulation around Antarctica have exhibited large variability over recent decades. Direct observations such as satellite data cover the past four decades only. Thus, a comparison with paleoclimate archives is essential to understand the natural and anthropogenic components of these recent changes. We have initiated a data call within CLIVASH2k community (http://pastglobalchanges.org/science/wg/2k-network/projects/clivash) to collect all available sodium (Na+) and sulfate (SO42-) concentration and fluxes from Antarctic ice cores. We aim to improve our understanding of large-scale sea-ice variability and atmospheric circulation over the past 2000 years. In this respect, ice cores are a unique archive.</p><p>Here we present the new database, which builds on previous efforts by the PAGES community in gathering snow accumulation (Thomas et al. 2017) and stable water isotope data (Stenni et al. 2017).  To date, 88 published and 14 unpublished records have been submitted, 10 of which span the full 2000 years. The data, especially 2000 years-long records are equally distributed over the Antarctic continent and all coastal regions are well represented.  The new data will allow us to investigate interannual and decadal-to-centennial scale variability in sea ice extent and atmospheric circulation and its regional differences over the past 2000 years.</p>


Geosciences ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Thomas ◽  
Claire S. Allen ◽  
Johan Etourneau ◽  
Amy C. F. King ◽  
Mirko Severi ◽  
...  

Dramatic changes in sea ice have been observed in both poles in recent decades. However, the observational period for sea ice is short, and the climate models tasked with predicting future change in sea ice struggle to capture the current Antarctic trends. Paleoclimate archives, from marine sedimentary records and coastal Antarctic ice cores, provide a means of understanding sea ice variability and its drivers over decadal to centennial timescales. In this study, we collate published records of Antarctic sea ice over the past 2000 years (2 ka). We evaluate the current proxies and explore the potential of combining marine and ice core records to produce multi-archive reconstructions. Despite identifying 92 sea ice reconstructions, the spatial and temporal resolution is only sufficient to reconstruct circum-Antarctic sea ice during the 20th century, not the full 2 ka. Our synthesis reveals a 90 year trend of increasing sea ice in the Ross Sea and declining sea ice in the Bellingshausen, comparable with observed trends since 1979. Reconstructions in the Weddell Sea, the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean reveal small negative trends in sea ice during the 20th century (1900–1990), in contrast to the observed sea ice expansion in these regions since 1979.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (22) ◽  
pp. eabc1379
Author(s):  
Pengfei Liu ◽  
Jed O. Kaplan ◽  
Loretta J. Mickley ◽  
Yang Li ◽  
Nathan J. Chellman ◽  
...  

Fire plays a pivotal role in shaping terrestrial ecosystems and the chemical composition of the atmosphere and thus influences Earth’s climate. The trend and magnitude of fire activity over the past few centuries are controversial, which hinders understanding of preindustrial to present-day aerosol radiative forcing. Here, we present evidence from records of 14 Antarctic ice cores and 1 central Andean ice core, suggesting that historical fire activity in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) exceeded present-day levels. To understand this observation, we use a global fire model to show that overall SH fire emissions could have declined by 30% over the 20th century, possibly because of the rapid expansion of land use for agriculture and animal production in middle to high latitudes. Radiative forcing calculations suggest that the decreasing trend in SH fire emissions over the past century largely compensates for the cooling effect of increasing aerosols from fossil fuel and biofuel sources.


2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
QuanSheng Ge ◽  
JingYun Zheng ◽  
ZhiXin Hao ◽  
HaoLong Liu

1999 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry L. Jones ◽  
Douglas J. Kennett

AbstractMussel shells from central California coastal archaeological sites record changes in sea surface temperatures in the past 2000 years. Water temperatures, inferred from oxygen isotopes in the shells, were about 1°C cooler than present and stable between 2000 and 700 yr ago. Between about 700 and 500 yr ago, seasonal variation was greater than present, with extremes above and below historic levels. Water temperatures were 2–3°C cooler than today 500–300 yr ago. The interval of variable sea temperatures 700–500 yr ago partially coincided with an interval of drought throughout central California. A coincident disruption in human settlement along the coast suggests movements of people related to declining water sources. Quantities of fish bone in central coast middens dating to this same period are high relative to other periods, and the remains of northern anchovies, a species sensitive to changing oceanographic conditions, are also abundant. The continued use of local fisheries suggests that changes in settlement and diet were influenced more by drought than by a decrease in marine productivity, as fish provided a staple during an interval of low terrestrial productivity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 610 ◽  
pp. A28 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Mancuso ◽  
C. Taricco ◽  
P. Colombetti ◽  
S. Rubinetti ◽  
N. Sinha ◽  
...  

Typical reconstructions of historic heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) BHMF are based on the analysis of the sunspot activity, geomagnetic data or on measurement of cosmogenic isotopes stored in terrestrial reservoirs like trees (14C) and ice cores (10Be). The various reconstructions of BHMF are however discordant both in strength and trend. Cosmogenic isotopes, which are produced by galactic cosmic rays impacting on meteoroids and whose production rate is modulated by the varying HMF convected outward by the solar wind, may offer an alternative tool for the investigation of the HMF in the past centuries. In this work, we aim to evaluate the long-term evolution of BHMF over a period covering the past twenty-two solar cycles by using measurements of the cosmogenic 44Ti activity (τ1∕2 = 59.2 ± 0.6 yr) measured in 20 meteorites which fell between 1766 and 2001. Within the given uncertainties, our result is compatible with a HMF increase from 4.87-0.30+0.24 nT in 1766 to 6.83-0.11+0.13 nT in 2001, thus implying an overall average increment of 1.96-0.35+0.43 nT over 235 years since 1766 reflecting the modern Grand maximum. The BHMF trend thus obtained is then compared with the most recent reconstructions of the near-Earth HMF strength based on geomagnetic, sunspot number, and cosmogenic isotope data.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1395-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Fujita ◽  
F. Parrenin ◽  
M. Severi ◽  
H. Motoyama ◽  
E. W. Wolff

Abstract. Two deep ice cores, Dome Fuji (DF) and EPICA Dome C (EDC), drilled at remote dome summits in Antarctica, were volcanically synchronized to improve our understanding of their chronologies. Within the past 216 kyr, 1401 volcanic tie points have been identified. DFO2006 is the chronology for the DF core that strictly follows O2 / N2 age constraints with interpolation using an ice flow model. AICC2012 is the chronology for five cores, including the EDC core, and is characterized by glaciological approaches combining ice flow modelling with various age markers. A precise comparison between the two chronologies was performed. The age differences between them are within 2 kyr, except at Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5. DFO2006 gives ages older than AICC2012, with peak values of 4.5 and 3.1 kyr at MIS 5d and MIS 5b, respectively. Accordingly, the ratios of duration (AICC2012 / DFO2006) range between 1.4 at MIS 5e and 0.7 at MIS 5a. When making a comparison with accurately dated speleothem records, the age of DFO2006 agrees well at MIS 5d, while the age of AICC2012 agrees well at MIS 5b, supporting their accuracy at these stages. In addition, we found that glaciological approaches tend to give chronologies with younger ages and with longer durations than age markers suggest at MIS 5d–6. Therefore, we hypothesize that the causes of the DFO2006–AICC2012 age differences at MIS 5 are (i) overestimation in surface mass balance at around MIS 5d–6 in the glaciological approach and (ii) an error in one of the O2 / N2 age constraints by ~ 3 kyr at MIS 5b. Overall, we improved our knowledge of the timing and duration of climatic stages at MIS 5. This new understanding will be incorporated into the production of the next common age scale. Additionally, we found that the deuterium signals of ice, δDice, at DF tends to lead the one at EDC, with the DF lead being more pronounced during cold periods. The lead of DF is by +710 years (maximum) at MIS 5d, −230 years (minimum) at MIS 7a and +60 to +126 years on average.


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