Greenland records of aerosol source and atmospheric lifetime changes from the Eemian to the Holocene.

The Northern Hemisphere experienced dramatic changes during the last glacial, featuring vast ice sheets and abrupt climate events, while high northern latitudes during the last interglacial (Eemian) were warmer than today. Here we use high-resolution aerosol records from the Greenland NEEM ice core to reconstruct the environmental alterations in aerosol source regions accompanying these changes. Separating source and transport effects, we find strongly reduced terrestrial biogenic emissions during glacial times reflecting net loss of vegetated area in North America. Rapid climate changes during the glacial have little effect on terrestrial biogenic aerosol emissions. A strong increase in terrestrial dust emissions during the coldest intervals indicates higher aridity and dust storm activity in East Asian deserts. Glacial sea salt aerosol emissions in the North Atlantic region increase only moderately (50%), likely due to sea ice expansion. Lower aerosol concentrations in Eemian ice compared to the Holocene are mainly due to shortened atmospheric residence time, while emissions changed little.

Antarctic-wide array of high-resolution ice core records reveals pervasive lead pollution began in 1889 and persists today.

Interior Antarctica is among the most remote places on Earth and was thought to be beyond the reach of human impacts when Amundsen and Scott raced to the South Pole in 1911. Here we show detailed measurements from an extensive array of 16 ice cores quantifying substantial toxic heavy metal lead pollution at South Pole and throughout Antarctica by 1889 - beating polar explorers by more than 22 years. Unlike the Arctic where lead pollution peaked in the 1970s, lead pollution in Antarctica was as high in the early 20(th) century as at any time since industrialization. The similar timing and magnitude of changes in lead deposition across Antarctica, as well as the characteristic isotopic signature of Broken Hill lead found throughout the continent, suggest that this single emission source in southern Australia was responsible for the introduction of lead pollution into Antarctica at the end of the 19(th) century and remains a significant source today. An estimated 660 t of industrial lead have been deposited over Antarctica during the past 130 years as a result of mid-latitude industrial emissions, with regional-to-global scale circulation likely modulating aerosol concentrations. Despite abatement efforts, significant lead pollution in Antarctica persists into the 21(st) century.

Continuous flow analysis method for determination of soluble iron and aluminium in ice cores.

Iron and aluminium are the two most abundant metals on the Earth's crust, but they display quite different biogeochemical properties. While iron is essential to many biological processes, aluminium has not been found to have any biological function at all. In environmental studies, iron has been studied in detail for its limiting role in the bioproductivity of high nutrient, low carbon oceanic zones, while aluminium is routinely used as a reference of crustal contributions to atmospheric deposition archives including peat bogs, lacustrine and marine sediments and ice sheets and glaciers. We report here the development of a flow injection analysis technique, which has been optimised for the simultaneous determination of soluble iron and aluminium in polar ice cores. Iron was determined by its catalytic role in the reduction of N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamene (DPD) to a semiquinonic form (DPDQ) and subsequent absorption spectroscopy at 514 nm. Aluminium was determined by spectroscopic analysis of an aluminium-lumogallion complex that exhibits fluorescence at 560 nm. These techniques have been applied to a section of Greenland ice dated to 1729-1733 AD and indicate that volcanism is a source of highly soluble aluminium and iron.