Snow chemistry across Antarctica

N. Bertler , P. A. Mayewski , C. Genthon (1) , A. Aristarain , P. Barrett , Silvia Becagli (2) , R. Bernardo , S. Bo , C. Xiao , M. Curran , D. Qin , D. Dixon , F. Ferron , H. Fisher , M. M. Frey (1) , Massimo Frezzotti (3) , F. Fundel (4) , Roberto Gragnani (3) , G. Hamilton , M. Handley , Sungmin Hong (5) , E. Isaksson , J. Kang , J. Ren , K. Kamiyama , S. Kanamori , E. Karkas , L. Karlof , S. Kaspari , K. Kreutz , A. Kurbatov , E. Meyerson , Y. Ming , M. Zhang , H. Motoyama , R. Mulvaney (6) , H. Oerter (4) , E. Osterberg , Marco Proposito (3) , A. Pyne , U. Ruth (4) , J. Simões (1) , B. B.N. Smith , S. Sneed , K. Teinilä (7) , F. Traufetter , Roberto Udisti (2) , A. Virkkula (7) , Osamu Watanabe (8) , Ben Williamson (9) , J.-G. Winther , Y. Li , E. Wolff (6) , Zhenyu Li , A. Zielinski

1 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement
2 Department of Chemistry
3 ENEA - Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development [Frascati]
4 AWI - Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
5 KORDI - Korean Ocean Research and Development Institute
6 BAS - British Antarctic Survey
7 FMI - Finnish Meteorological Institute
8 Research Center for Development of Far Infrared Region
9 Research and Development

An updated compilation of published and new data of major-ion (Ca, Cl, K, Mg, Na, NO3, SO4) and methylsulfonate (MS) concentrations in snow from 520 Antarctic sites is provided by the national ITASE (International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition) programmes of Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and the national Antarctic programme of Finland. The comparison shows that snow chemistry concentrations vary by up to four orders of magnitude across Antarctica and exhibit distinct geographical patterns. The Antarctic-wide comparison of glaciochemical records provides a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of the fundamental factors that ultimately control the chemistry of snow or ice samples. This paper aims to initiate data compilation and administration in order to provide a framework for facilitation of Antarctic-wide snow chemistry discussions across all ITASE nations and other contributing groups. The data are made available through the ITASE web page (http://www2.umaine.edu/itase/content/syngroups/snowchem.html) and will be updated with new data as they are provided. In addition, recommendations for future research efforts are summarized.

Domains: Glaciology

N. Bertler, P. A. Mayewski, C. Genthon, A. Aristarain, P. Barrett, et al.. Snow chemistry across Antarctica. Annals of Glaciology, 2005, 41 (1), pp.167 à 179. ⟨10.3189/172756405781813320⟩. ⟨insu-00374331⟩