Microfluidic device for continuous-flow analysis of organics in oldest ice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele FIlippi ◽  
Chiara Giorio
Keyword(s):  
Time Resolution ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Flow Analysis ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Core Sample ◽  
High Time ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
Continuous Analysis ◽  
Climate History ◽  
History Of

<p>The Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice (BEOI) project will drill an ice core dating back to 1.5 million-years (1.5 Myr) ago. This ice core is of particular interest to the scientific community as it will be the only one covering the climate history of the Mid Pleistocene Transition, when glacial-interglacial cycles changed from a 40 Kyr to 100 Kyr cyclicity, and for which causes are not well understood currently. Obtaining useful climatic information beyond 800 Kyr represents an analytical challenge due to the fact that the deepest section of the ice core is very compact and the amount of sample available is very low.</p><p>Current analytical methods for the determination of organics in ice are characterized by a large number of steps that requires large amounts of sample for a single analysis. This results in the loss of the high time resolution desired from ice cores which is particularly problematic for deeper (i.e. older) records where the ice is more compact.</p><p>This work aims at combining the growing field of microfluidics with improvements to conventional mass spectrometry to allow for continuous analysis of organics in ice cores, melted in continuous on a melting-head. In fact, microfluidic is a powerful technology in which, only a small amount of liquid (10<sup>-9</sup>-10<sup>-18</sup> liters) is manipulated and controlled with an extremely high precision. The method invokes a three-step process: (1) the melted ice core sample is sent to a nebulizer to produce aerosol, then (2) the aerosol is dried to remove water content and concentrate the sample, and (3) the aerosol is sent to a mass spectrometer for continuous analysis through a modified electrospray ionization (ESI) probe.</p><p>This novel system, once operational, can be applied to a range of ice cores but is especially useful for older ice cores given the stratification of deeper segments. It will allow the research community to measure organic compounds with a high time resolution, even in the oldest of ice, to retrieve paleoclimatic information that would otherwise be lost using traditional methods.</p>

scholarly journals 1000 year ice-core records from Berkner Island, Antarctica

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 45-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mulvaney ◽  
Hans Oerter ◽  
David A. Peel ◽  
Wolfgang Graf ◽  
Carol Arrowsmith ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decadal Variability ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Aerosol Deposition ◽  
Climate History ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
The Past ◽  
Annual Layer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Season

AbstractTwo medium-depth ice cores were retrieved from Berkner Island by a joint project between the Alfred-Wegener-Institut and the British Antarctic Survey in the 1994/95 field season. A 151m deep core from the northern dome (Reinwarthhöhe) of Berkner Island spans 700 years, while a 181 m deep core from the southern dome (Thyssenhöhe) spans approximately 1200 years. Both cores display clear seasonal cycles in electrical conductivity measurements, allowing dating by annual-layer counting and the calculation of accumulation profiles. Stable-isotope measurements (both δ18O and δD), together with the accumulation data, allow us to estimate changes in climate for most of the past millennium: the data show multi-decadal variability around a generally stable long-termmean. In addition, a full suite of major chemistry measurements is available to define the history of aerosol deposition at these sites: again, there is little evidence that the chemistry of the sites has changed over the past six centuries. Finally, we suggest that the southern dome, with an ice thickness of 950 m, is an ideal site from which to gain a climate history of the late stages of the last glacial and the deglaciation for comparison with the records from the deep Antarctic ice cores, and with other intermediate-depth cores such as Taylor Dome and Siple Dome.

scholarly journals Theoretical and Experimental Analysis for Cleaning Ice Cores from EstisolTM 140 Drill Liquid

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3830
Author(s):  
Francesco Enrichi ◽  
Dorthe Dahl-Jensen ◽  
Jørgen Peder Steffensen ◽  
Carlo Barbante
Keyword(s):  
Drilling Fluid ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Temperature Stability ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Climate History ◽  
Run Off ◽  
Different Temperatures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Storage

To reconstruct climate history of the past 1.5 Million years, the project: Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice (BEOI) will drill about 2700 m of ice core in East Antarctica (2021–2025). As drilling fluid, an aliphatic ester fluid, EstisolTM 140, will be used. Newly drilled ice cores will be retrieved from the drill soaked in fluid, and this fluid should be removed from the cores. Most of it will be vacuum-cleaned off in a Fluid Extraction Device and wiped off with paper towels. Based on our experiences in Greenland deep ice coring, most of the residual fluid can be removed by storing the cores openly on shelves in a ventilated room. After a week of “drying”, the cores have a dry feel, handling them do not give “wet” gloves and they can easily be marked with lead pencils. This paper presents a theoretical investigation and some simple testing on the “drying” process. The rates of sublimation of ice and evaporation of fluid have been calculated at different temperatures. The calculations show that sublimation of the ice core should not occur, and that evaporation of fluid should be almost negligible. Our test results support these calculations, but also revealed significant fluid run-off and dripping, resulting in the removal of most of the fluid in a couple of days, independent of temperature and ventilation conditions. Finally, we discuss crucial factors that ensure optimal long-term ice core preservation in storage, such as temperature stability, defrosting cycles of freezers and open core storage versus storage of cores in insulated crates.

scholarly journals A novel approach to process brittle ice for continuous flow analysis of stable water isotopes

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (244) ◽  
pp. 289-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
REBECCA L. PYNE ◽  
ELIZABETH D. KELLER ◽  
SILVIA CANESSA ◽  
NANCY A. N. BERTLER ◽  
ALEX R. PYNE ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Flow ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Flow Analysis ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Water Isotopes ◽  
Stable Water Isotopes ◽  
Climate History ◽  
Continuous Flow Analysis ◽  
Isotope Measurements ◽  
Water Isotope

ABSTRACTBrittle ice, which occurs in all intermediate-depth and deep ice cores retrieved from high-latitude regions, presents a challenge for high-resolution measurements of water isotopes, gases, ions and other quantities conducted with continuous flow analysis (CFA). We present a novel method of preserving brittle ice for CFA stable water isotope measurements using data from a new ice core recovered by the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) project. Modest modification of the drilling technique and the accommodation of non-horizontal fractures (‘slanted breaks’) in processing led to a substantial improvement in the percentage of brittle ice analyzed with CFA (87.8%). Whereas traditional processing methods remove entire fragmented pieces of ice, our method allowed the incorporation of a total of 3 m of ice (1% of the 261 m of brittle ice and ~1300 years of climate history) that otherwise would not have been available for CFA. Using the RICE stable water isotope CFA dataset, we demonstrate the effect of slanted breaks and analyze the resulting smoothing of the data with real and simulated examples. Our results suggest that retaining slanted breaks are a promising technique for preserving brittle ice material for CFA stable water isotope measurements.

scholarly journals Deglacial temperature history of West Antarctica

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (50) ◽  
pp. 14249-14254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt M. Cuffey ◽  
Gary D. Clow ◽  
Eric J. Steig ◽  
Christo Buizert ◽  
T. J. Fudge ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Temperature History ◽  
West Antarctica ◽  
Climate History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Climate Forcings ◽  
Earth’S Climate

The most recent glacial to interglacial transition constitutes a remarkable natural experiment for learning how Earth’s climate responds to various forcings, including a rise in atmospheric CO2. This transition has left a direct thermal remnant in the polar ice sheets, where the exceptional purity and continual accumulation of ice permit analyses not possible in other settings. For Antarctica, the deglacial warming has previously been constrained only by the water isotopic composition in ice cores, without an absolute thermometric assessment of the isotopes’ sensitivity to temperature. To overcome this limitation, we measured temperatures in a deep borehole and analyzed them together with ice-core data to reconstruct the surface temperature history of West Antarctica. The deglacial warming was 11.3±1.8∘C, approximately two to three times the global average, in agreement with theoretical expectations for Antarctic amplification of planetary temperature changes. Consistent with evidence from glacier retreat in Southern Hemisphere mountain ranges, the Antarctic warming was mostly completed by 15 kyBP, several millennia earlier than in the Northern Hemisphere. These results constrain the role of variable oceanic heat transport between hemispheres during deglaciation and quantitatively bound the direct influence of global climate forcings on Antarctic temperature. Although climate models perform well on average in this context, some recent syntheses of deglacial climate history have underestimated Antarctic warming and the models with lowest sensitivity can be discounted.

Solar Corona Investigation by the Coronal Line Photometer at Lomnický Peak

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 431-434
Author(s):  
M. Minarovjech ◽  
M. Rybanský
Keyword(s):  
Solar Corona ◽  
Time Resolution ◽  
Active Regions ◽  
High Time ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
List Type ◽  
Type Number ◽  
Coronal Line ◽  
Global Cycle

AbstractThis paper deals with a possibility to use the ground-based method of observation in order to solve basic problems connected with the solar corona research. Namely:1.heating of the solar corona2.course of the global cycle in the corona3.rotation of the solar corona and development of active regions.There is stressed a possibility of high-time resolution of the coronal line photometer at Lomnický Peak coronal station, and use of the latter to obtain crucial observations.

Discovery of the fast optical variability of GRB 080319B and the prospects for wide-field optical monitoring with high time resolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 180 (4) ◽  
pp. 424 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.M. Beskin ◽  
S.V. Karpov ◽  
S.F. Bondar ◽  
V.L. Plokhotnichenko ◽  
A. Guarnieri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Resolution ◽  
High Time ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
Optical Variability ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Optical Monitoring
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