Representativeness and seasonality of major ion records derived from NEEM firn cores

Gfeller, Gideon; Fischer, Hubertus; Bigler, Matthias; Schüpbach, Simon; Leuenberger, Daiana; Mini, Olivia (2014). Representativeness and seasonality of major ion records derived from NEEM firn cores. The Cryosphere, 8(5), pp. 1855-1870. Copernicus 10.5194/tc-8-1855-2014

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The seasonal and annual representativeness of ionic aerosol proxies (among others, calcium, sodium, ammonium and nitrate) in various firn cores in the vicinity of the NEEM drill site in northwest Greenland have been assessed. Seasonal representativeness is very high as one core explains more than 60 % of the variability within the area. The inter-annual representativeness, however, can be substantially lower (depending on the species) making replicate coring indispensable to derive the atmospheric variability of aerosol species. A single core at the NEEM site records only 30 % of the inter-annual atmospheric variability in some species, while five replicate cores are already needed to cover approximately 70 % of the inter-annual atmospheric variability in all species.
The spatial representativeness is very high within 60 cm, rapidly decorrelates within 10 m but does not diminish further within 3 km. We attribute this to wind reworking of the
snow pack leading to sastrugi formation. Due to the high resolution and seasonal representativeness of the records we can derive accurate seasonalities of the measured species for modern (AD 1990–2010) times as well as for pre-industrial (AD 1623–1750) times. Sodium and calcium show similar seasonality (peaking in February and March respectively) for modern and pre-industrial times, whereas ammonium and nitrate are influenced by anthro pogenic activities. Nitrate and ammonium both peak in May
during modern times, whereas during pre-industrial times ammonium peaked during July–August and nitrate during June–July.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Climate and Environmental Physics
10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute

UniBE Contributor:

Gfeller, Gideon, Fischer, Hubertus, Bigler, Matthias, Schüpbach, Simon, Leuenberger, Daiana, Mini, Olivia

Subjects:

500 Science > 530 Physics

ISSN:

1994-0424

Publisher:

Copernicus

Language:

English

Submitter:

Monika Wälti-Stampfli

Date Deposited:

16 Dec 2014 15:34

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:38

Publisher DOI:

10.5194/tc-8-1855-2014

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.61213

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/61213

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