Saharan Dust Proxy Record from a Colle Gnifetti Ice Core (KCC)

DOI

Dust events originating from the Saharan desert have far reaching environmental impacts but the causal mechanism of magnitude and occurrence of Saharan dust events (SDEs) during the pre-instrumental era requires further research, particularly as a potential analog for future climate. Using an ultra-high resolution glacio-chemical record from the 2013 Colle Gnifetti (CG) ice core drilled in the Swiss-Italian Alps we reconstructed a 2000 year-long summer Saharan dust record. We analyzed both modern (1780-2006) and pre-modern Common Era (C.E.) major and trace element records to determine air mass source regions to the Colle Gnifetti glacier and assess similarities to modern and reconstructed climate trends in the Northern Hemisphere. This new pSDE (proxy SDE) reconstruction, produced using measurements from a novel, continuous ultra-high-resolution (120-µm) ice core analysis method (laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer or LA-ICP-MS) is comprised of 316,000 data points per element covering the period 1 to 1820 C.E. We found that the CG ice core captures an anomalous increase in Saharan dust transport during the onset of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (870-1000 C.E.) and records other prominent shorter events (C.E., 140-170, 370-450, 1320-1370, and 1910-2000), offering a framework for new insights into the implications of Saharan dust variability.

Supplement to: Clifford, Heather; Spaulding, Nicole; Kurbatov, Andrei; More, Alexander; Korotkikh, Elena; Sneed, Sharon B; Handley, Kim M; Maasch, Kirk A; Loveluck, Christopher; Chaplin, Joyce; McCormick, Michael; Mayewski, Paul Andrew (2019): A 2000 Year Saharan Dust Event Proxy Record from an Ice Core in the European Alps. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124(23), 12882-12900

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.908569
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD030725
Related Identifier IsDocumentedBy https://store.pangaea.de/Publications/Clifford-etal_2019/Cliffordetal2019_METADATA_InstrumentSpecifications.txt
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.908569
Provenance
Creator Clifford, Heather ORCID logo; Spaulding, Nicole ORCID logo; Kurbatov, Andrei ORCID logo; More, Alexander ORCID logo; Korotkikh, Elena ORCID logo; Sneed, Sharon B; Handley, Kim M ORCID logo; Maasch, Kirk A ORCID logo; Loveluck, Christopher ORCID logo; Chaplin, Joyce ORCID logo; McCormick, Michael ORCID logo; Mayewski, Paul
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2019
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Publication Series of Datasets; Collection
Format application/zip
Size 8 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (7.876 LON, 45.929 LAT); Colle Gnifetti, Monte Rosa, Swiss Alps
Temporal Coverage Begin 2013-08-04T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2013-08-11T00:00:00Z