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Layering of surface snow and firn at Kohnen Station, Antarctica: Noise or seasonal signal?

  • The density of firn is an important property for monitoring and modeling the ice sheets as well as to model the pore close-off and thus to interpret ice core-based greenhouse gas records. One feature, which is still in debate, is the potential existence of an annual cycle of firn density in low-accumulation regions. Several studies describe or assume seasonally successive density layers, horizontally evenly distributed, as seen in radar data. On the other hand, high-resolution density measurements on firn cores in Antarctica and Greenland show no clear seasonal cycle in the top few meters. A major caveat of most existing snow-pit and firn-core-based studies is that they represent one vertical profile from a laterally heterogeneous density field. To overcome this, we created an extensive data set of horizontal and vertical density data at Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land, on the East Antarctic Plateau. We drilled and analyzed three 90m long firn cores as well as 143 one-meter-long vertical profiles from two elongated snow trenches toThe density of firn is an important property for monitoring and modeling the ice sheets as well as to model the pore close-off and thus to interpret ice core-based greenhouse gas records. One feature, which is still in debate, is the potential existence of an annual cycle of firn density in low-accumulation regions. Several studies describe or assume seasonally successive density layers, horizontally evenly distributed, as seen in radar data. On the other hand, high-resolution density measurements on firn cores in Antarctica and Greenland show no clear seasonal cycle in the top few meters. A major caveat of most existing snow-pit and firn-core-based studies is that they represent one vertical profile from a laterally heterogeneous density field. To overcome this, we created an extensive data set of horizontal and vertical density data at Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land, on the East Antarctic Plateau. We drilled and analyzed three 90m long firn cores as well as 143 one-meter-long vertical profiles from two elongated snow trenches to obtain a two-dimensional view of the density variations. The analysis of the 45m wide and 1m deep density fields reveals a seasonal cycle in density. However, the seasonality is overprinted by strong stratigraphic noise, making it invisible when analyzing single firn cores. Our density data set extends the view from the local ice core perspective to a hundred meter scale and thus supports linking spatially integrating methods such as radar and seismic studies to ice and firn cores.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Thomas LaeppleORCiDGND, Maria Hörhold, Thomas MünchORCiDGND, Johannes Freitag, Anna Wegner, Sepp Kipfstuhl
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JF003919
ISSN:2169-9003
ISSN:2169-9011
Title of parent work (English):Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface
Publisher:American Geophysical Union
Place of publishing:Washington
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2016
Publication year:2016
Release date:2020/03/22
Volume:121
Number of pages:12
First page:1849
Last Page:1860
Funding institution:German Science Foundation [HO-5036/1-1]; Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association [VG-NH900]
Organizational units:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Physik und Astronomie
Peer review:Referiert
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