Historical reconstruction of the earth's past atmospheric environment from Greenland and Antarctic snow and ice cores

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude F. Boutron

During the past decades, the investigation of various elements, species, and isotopes in the frozen atmospheric archives stored in the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps for several hundred thousand years has provided a wealth of fascinating information on past and recent changes in the atmospheric environment of our planet. After a brief description of the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps, we give an overview of the procedures that are used in the field for collecting snow and ice from the surface down to great depths. We discuss the techniques used to date and analyse the samples. The main results obtained to date are then presented, with special emphasis on the very recent. The analysis of the snow and ice layers deposited during the past few centuries, especially since the Industrial Revolution, has allowed us to assess clearly the impact human activity has had on the atmosphere, for important constituents such as heavy metals, sulfur and nitrogen compounds, greenhouse gases, carbon and organic compounds, and artificial radionuclides. The analysis of ancient ice up to several hundred thousand years old has provided unique insight on the past natural changes that affected our atmosphere during glacial–interglacial transitions, especially the temperature, greenhouse gases, soil- and sea-derived aerosols, and heavy metals.Key words: Greenland, Antarctica, ice, global pollution, climate change, heavy metals.

Author(s):  
Hande Mutlu Ozturk

Technological developments in recent years have been affecting the lives of people and societies more rapidly than in the past. Developments in the field of communication, robotics, transportation, etc. are called the 4th Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 in the industrial sector. Technological developments have created great changes in the services and industrial sectors. Industry 4.0 has also led to changes in the transformation of the tourism sector and is likely to occur in future processes. This chapter examines the impact of Industry 4.0 on the tourism sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Péter Krecz ◽  
Andrea Herneczky ◽  
József Csernák ◽  
Aranka Baranyi

Special attention should be paid to the human factors that influence the competitiveness of companies when analysing the correlations of economic processes. It is no longer controversial today that human capital is an important and crucial factor in a company's performance. The efficient, effective contribution of human resources to an organization's success depends to a large extent on how it can ensure employees' motivation in the long run. Robotics and automation are gaining more and more ground nowadays. In our study we explore how employee motivation is influenced by the rapid and widespread use of robotics. The industrial revolution that is still going on today is bringing enormous changes. The industrial revolutions that happened earlier in history have fundamentally changed the lives of people and have always posed serious challenges to various economic actors. Changes have had a dual impact in the past. On the one hand, industrial production has resulted in a change in the economy and, on the other hand, a huge change in the social structure. In recent years, mechanization has seemed extreme, but this phase must be seen today as a natural part of daily life.


Environments ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Konstantinos P. Moustris ◽  
Ermioni Petraki ◽  
Kleopatra Ntourou ◽  
Georgios Priniotakis ◽  
Dimitrios Nikolopoulos

This work investigates the spatiotemporal variation of suspended particles with aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 10 μm (PM10) during a nineteen years period. Mean daily PM10 concentrations between 2001 and 2018, from five monitoring stations within the greater Athens area (GAA) are used. The aim is to investigate the impact of the economic crisis and the actions taken by the Greek state over the past decade on the distribution of PM10 within the GAA. Seasonality, intraweek, intraday and spatial variations of the PM10 concentrations as well as trends of data, are statistically studied. The work may assist the formation of PM10 forecasting models of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual horizon. Innovations are alternative ways of statistical treatment and the extended period of data, which, importantly, includes major economic and social events for the GAA. Significant decreasing trend in PM10 series concentrations at all examined stations were found. This may be due to economic and social reasons but also due to measures taken by the state so as to be harmonised with the European Directives concerning the protection of public health and the atmospheric environment of the European Union (EU) members.


1985 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 125-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.U. Hammer

Polar ice cores offer datable past snow deposits in the form of annual ice layers, which reflect the past atmospheric composition. Trace substances in the cores are related to the past mid-tropospheric impurity load, this being due to the vast extent of the polar ice sheets (or ice caps), their surface elevations and remoteness from most aerosol sources. Volcanic eruptions add to the rather low background impurity load via their eruptive products. This paper concentrates on the widespread influence on atmospheric impurity loads caused by the acid gas products from volcanic eruptions. In particular the following subjects are discussed: acid volcanic signals in ice cores, latitude of eruptions as derived by ice-core analysis, inter-hemispheric dating of the two polar ice sheets by equatorial eruptions, volcanic deposits in ice cores during the last glacial period and climatic implications.


2006 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 132-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meixue Yang ◽  
Tandong Yao ◽  
Xiaohua Gou ◽  
Huijun Wang ◽  
Thomas Neumann

AbstractIce cores contribute important records of past climate changes. As one of the thickest ice caps in central Asia, the Guliya ice cap (35°17′ N, 81°29′ E) provides valuable information for this critical region about the past climate and environment changes. We used wavelet analysis to examine periodic temperature and precipitation oscillations over the past 1700 years recorded in the Guliya ice core. The results show non-linear oscillations in the ice-core records, with multiple timescales. Temperature records indicate persistent oscillations with periodicities of approximately 200, 150 and 70 years. Precipitation records show significant periodicities at 200, 100, 150 and 60 years. However, the amplitude modulation and frequency vary with time. Wavelet analysis can explore these time series in greater detail and furnish additional useful information.


2002 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 202-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Stauffer ◽  
Jacqueline Flückiger ◽  
Eric Monnin ◽  
Jakob Schwander ◽  
Jean-Marc Barnola ◽  
...  

AbstractAnalyses of air extracted from polar ice cores are the most straightforward method of reconstructing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and their variations for past climatic epochs. These measurements show that the concentration of the three most important greenhouse gases (other than water vapour) CO2, CH4 and N2O have steadily increased during the past 250 years due to anthropogenic activities (Prather and others, 2001; Prentice and others, 2001). Ice-core results also provided the first evidence of a substantial increase in the concentration of the three gases during the transition from the last glacial epoch to the Holocene (Raynaud and others, 1993). However, results from different cores are not always in agreement concerning details and small, short-term variations. the composition of the air enclosed in bubbles can be slightly changed by fractionation during the enclosure process, by chemical reactions and/or biological activity in the ice and by fractionation during the air extraction. We compile here several records with short-term variations or anomalies and discuss possible causes, taking into account improved analytical techniques and new results.


1985 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 125-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.U. Hammer

Polar ice cores offer datable past snow deposits in the form of annual ice layers, which reflect the past atmospheric composition. Trace substances in the cores are related to the past mid-tropospheric impurity load, this being due to the vast extent of the polar ice sheets (or ice caps), their surface elevations and remoteness from most aerosol sources. Volcanic eruptions add to the rather low background impurity load via their eruptive products. This paper concentrates on the widespread influence on atmospheric impurity loads caused by the acid gas products from volcanic eruptions. In particular the following subjects are discussed: acid volcanic signals in ice cores, latitude of eruptions as derived by ice-core analysis, inter-hemispheric dating of the two polar ice sheets by equatorial eruptions, volcanic deposits in ice cores during the last glacial period and climatic implications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7267
Author(s):  
Xiaoyan Li ◽  
Jia Liu ◽  
Peijie Ni

Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have led to the emission of a lot of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, sharply increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and resulting in serious global warming. With the rapid development of computer technology, the digital economy is gradually becoming the engine of economic growth. As a new economic mode, how the digital economy affects the environment is worth studying. In this paper, we introduced the digital economy into the Solow growth model as technological progress and conducted fixed-effects regressions based on the global panel data of 190 countries from 2005 to 2016. We found an inverted U-shaped, non-linear relationship between CO2 emissions and the digital economy, which supports the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. We suggest that governments need to not only adopt hedging policies to reduce CO2 emissions caused by the digital economy in the early stage but also promote the development of the digital economy to achieve the goal of global collaborative environmental protection.


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