Application Of Pollen Analysis For Seasonal Dating Of Alpine Glacier Ice Cores With Seasonal Missing Layers
Abstract
Ice core studies from middle and low latitude glaciers have a problem that a reliable dating method has proved difficult due to wind erosion and vanishingly small amount of seasonal precipitation. They obscure the annual signal from the seasonal variations in chemical concentrations and oxygen isotope ratios that are typically used to date for ice cores. On the other hand, the ice cores from alpine glaciers contain many species of pollen grains that have different pollen seasons. Here we show that these pollen peaks allow us to decide four seasonal layers of a snow pit, and examine whether some seasonal missing layers due to wind erosion or little seasonal precipitation exist. In addition, they accordingly allow us to give an accurate measure of annual snow deposition even from the glacier where some seasonal layers are eroded by wind, or missing due to little seasonal precipitation.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004AGUFM.C51A1022N
- Keywords:
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- 1827 Glaciology (1863);
- 1863 Snow and ice (1827)