Dust in the Arctic during the Past Millennium from a Developing Array of Ice Cores: Linkages to Climate and Land Use

Abstract:

Continental dust is an important component of climate forcing, both because of its interaction with incoming solar and outgoing long wave radiation and because of its impact on albedo when deposited on bright surfaces such as fresh snow. Continental dust may also play an important role in ocean fertilization and carbon sequestration. Because the lifetime of dust aerosol in the atmosphere is only on the order of days to weeks, spatial and temporal variability in concentrations and fluxes is high and understanding of recent and long term changes is limited.

Here we present and discuss continuous, high depth resolution measurements of a range of dust proxies in a developing array of Arctic ice cores. Included are traditional proxies such as non-sea-salt (nss) calcium and insoluble particle number and size distribution as well as less traditional proxies such as rare earth elements which together provide important insights into how dust sources and transport may have changed in the past. The array includes a number of new ice core records from Greenland, the North Pacific, and Arctic Russia providing a spatial and temporal record of dust deposition to the Arctic. We compare these detailed dust records with climate and land use proxies to investigate drivers of dustiness in the Arctic during the last millennium.