HR: 1340h
AN: PP33C-1587    [Abstracts]
TI: The recently discovered unique isotopic records in ice sheets
AU: * Lal, D
EM: dlal@ucsd.edu
AF: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Geosciences Research Division, La Jolla, CA 92093 United States
AU: Jull, A
EM: jull@u.arizona.edu
AF: University of Arizona, NSF Arizona AMS Laboratory, Tucson, AZ 85721 United States
AB: The unique value of ice sheets for determining past geophysical and climatic parameters has long been realized. With the availability of new ice cores from the Arctic and Antarctic, and application of sensitive methods for reading archival records, the field of has continually grown and has contributed significantly to our understanding of how glacial-interglacial cycles evolved in the past 500 Kyrs. Alongside the above developments, one has recently discovered several new archival records in ice sheets which allow detailed studies of temporal variations in several geophysical parameters such as: (i) cosmic ray flux, (ii) solar activity, (iii) fluxes of IDPs and trace elements accreted with cosmic dust/meteoroids, (iv) concentrations of OH ion in the atmosphere, and (v) quantification of firnification processes in slowly accumulating ice sheets. These new archives are characterized by radioactive and stable isotopes arising from the incidence of cosmic ray particles and extra-terrestrial dust particles on the Earth's atmosphere and on the ice sheet. In several cases, the archival isotopic information constitutes a unique record of the above mentioned geophysical parameters, sometimes the only direct approach for determining a parameter. We discuss the nature of the isotopic records and the information obtained to date from their studies.
DE: 0724 Ice cores (4932)
DE: 4918 Cosmogenic isotopes (1150)
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005