A Record of Rising 20th Century Snow Accumulation from the Denali Ice Core

Abstract:

Snow accumulation records derived from ice cores are one of the only direct archives of precipitation changes that extend prior to the instrumental period. In Alaska, the development of centennial scale precipitation records is needed to contextualize the current rapid changes in precipitation and glacial mass balance occurring along the North Pacific margin. Here, we investigate precipitation changes over the last three centuries using an ice core collected to bedrock from Mt. Hunter (63° N, 151° W, 4,000 meters above sea level) in Denali National Park, Alaska. To develop the snow accumulation record, we calculated water equivalent annual layer thicknesses in the ice core by identification of annual peaks in major ions (MSA, Cl^-, NO₃^-, SO₄^2-, Na⁺, NH₄⁺, K⁺, Mg²⁺, and Ca²⁺) and water isotopes. We then corrected the annual layer thickness for thinning using three different flow models (Nye, Hooke and Dansgaard-Johnsen) that have been widely used to simulate layer thickness with depth near an ice divide. Each of these models is optimized such that the discrepancy between the annual layer counted age scale and the modeled age scale is minimized. Our results show that water equivalent annual accumulation has increased from 1.43 meters in 1900 to 2.03 meters by 2012, an increase of 42%. The Mt. Hunter accumulation record is regionally representative of precipitation in southwest and central Alaska based on strong correlations with reanalysis precipitation data. Comparisons with ERA-Interim reanalysis data show that years of high accumulation on Denali are associated with stronger southerly winds, warmer sea surface and air temperatures, and pressure anomalies resembling a positive phase of the East Pacific-North Pacific Pattern. Together, this analysis shows that precipitation on Mt. Hunter has a strong positive correlation (R²=0.73) with annual average meridional wind strength in southwestern Alaska, which is related to atmospheric pressure gradients between the Bering Sea and the eastern Gulf of Alaska.