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New Zealand International Transantarctic Scientific Expedition (NZ ITASE) - Climate variability measured from ice cores taken along the Victoria Land Coast

Entry ID: K049_1999_2008_NZ_1

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Summary

Abstract: The climate of the Victoria Land Coast is created by the interacting influences of the Dry Valleys, East Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Ross Sea. Slight changes can significantly alter local weather patterns and as such a climate record of the area provides ideal opportunities to study rapid, high frequency climatic variations. International polar ice coring programmes (e.g. GISP and Vostok) have ... provided powerful new insights into Earth's climate back 400,000 years, from the diverse inventory of atmospheric information stored both within the ice and trapped air bubbles. To understand and predict the local response to anthropogenically induced global warming seen in these "global" ice cores, the focus of ice core research in Antarctica is moving to the acquisition of high-resolution regional paleoclimatic archives of annual-scale that overlap with and extend the instrumental records of the last 40 years back several thousand years. This has been a key motivation behind the US-led International Transantarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) of which New Zealand is a member.

The New Zealand project's objective is to recover a series of ice cores from glaciers along a 14-degree latitudinal transect of the climatically sensitive Victoria Land coastline and thereby directly contribute a critical dataset to ITASE. The NZ ITASE sites (including two sites at Victoria Lower Glacier, Baldwin Glacier, Wilson Piedmont Glacier, Polar Plateau, Evans Piedmont Glacier, Mt Erebus Saddle, Whitehall Glacier, Skinner Saddle and Gawn Ice Piedmont Glacier with future sites planned at Beardmore Glacier, Roosevelt Island, and coastal sites in West Antarctica) have been chosen to capture and quantify the steep climate gradients from the Scott Coast to the Polar Plateau, the local climate system of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and the effect of altitude within the Transantarctic Mountains. Coastal sites are especially climate sensitive and show potential to archive local, rapid climate change events that are subdued or lost in the 'global' inland ice core records.

Investigation and datasets include: GPR/GPS surveying to map bedrock topography and internal glacial structure and glacier topography, firn and ice cores to quantify the variability of climate record with analysis of temperature, crystal structure, crystal geometry, density of the snow, melt, dust/tephra occurrence, gas content, porosity, gas bubble size and geometry, snow profiles were analysed for ion content, isotopic ratios, dust content, beta radioactivity, chemical properties and mineralogy to transfer functions with the meterological record, borehole temperature and light penetration, submergence velocity measurements to analyse the mass balance of the glaciers, meterological data and ablation measurements.

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Description: The IGS global system of satellite tracking stations, Data Centers, and Analysis Centers puts high-quality GPS data and data products on line in near real time to meet the objectives of a wide range of scientific and engineering applications and studies.

Geographic Coverage

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Spatial coordinates

	N: -72.9	S: -77.72	E: 167.67	W: 159.87
Min Altitude: 0 Max Altitude: 2400
Min Depth: 0 Max Depth: 200

Temporal Coverage

Start Date: 1999-11-24

Paleo Temporal Coverage

Chrono Unit:

PHANEROZOIC > CENOZOIC > QUATERNARY > HOLOCENE

Location Keywords

CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA > MT EREBUS SADDLE

CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA > VICTORIA LAND COAST

Science Keywords

CRYOSPHERE > GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS > GLACIERS

PALEOCLIMATE > ICE CORE RECORDS

ISO Topic Category

FARMING

BIOTA

Platform

FIELD SURVEYS

FIELD INVESTIGATION

Access Constraints ESAT is an extension for ArcView GIS, version 3.1 or 3.2. If cell-based Grid
data is to be used, then the ArcView Spatial Analyst extension is also needed.
MS Word (either '97 or 2000) is also required to create summary reports, and MS
Access (97 or 2000) is used for data entry of tests.

Ancillary Keywords

GIS

Development

Service Provider

UFL/CDCP/GFPIRC > Geo-Facilities Planning & Information Center, College of Design Construction and Planning, University of Florida

Service Organization URL: http://www.geoplan.ufl.edu/

Service Provider Personnel
Name: UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA GEOPLAN CENTER Email: fgdl-data at geoplan.ufl.edu Contact Address: GeoPlan PO Box 115706 City: Gainesville Province or State: FL Postal Code: 32611-5706 Country: USA