A 108.83-m ice-core record of atmospheric dust deposition at Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), Central Himalaya

Jianzhong Xu , Shugui Hou (1, 2) , Dahe Qin , Susan Kaspari (3) , Paul Andrew Mayewski , Jean Robert Petit (4) , Barbara Delmonte (5) , Shichang Kang , Jiawen Ren (6) , Jerome Chappellaz (5) , Sungmin Hong

1 State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences
2 School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences
3 CCI - Climate Change Institute [Orono]
4 CLIPS
5 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement
6 State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science

The central Himalaya can be regarded as an ideal site for developing a long-term ice core dust record to reflect the environmental signals from regional to semi-hemispheric scales. Here we present a dust record from segments of a 108.83-m ice core recovered from the East Rongbuk (ER) Glacier (27°59′N, 86°55′E; 6518 m a.s.l.) on the northeast slope of Mt. Qomolangma (Everest) in the central Himalaya, covering the period AD 600-1960. Due to rapidly layer thinning and coarse sampling, we primarily discuss the changes in the dust record since AD 1500 in this paper. Results show a significant positive relationship between the dust concentration and reconstructed air temperatures during this period, suggesting a likely cold-humid and warm-dry climatic pattern in the dust source regions, namely Central Asia. This is associated with the variability in the strength of the westerlies and its corresponding precipitation.

Keywords: Dust; Ice core; Qomolangma (Everest); Himalaya

Domains: Glaciology

Jianzhong Xu, Shugui Hou, Dahe Qin, Susan Kaspari, Paul Andrew Mayewski, et al.. A 108.83-m ice-core record of atmospheric dust deposition at Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), Central Himalaya. Quaternary Research, 2010, 73 (1), pp.33-38. ⟨10.1016/J.YQRES.2009.09.005⟩. ⟨insu-00562461⟩