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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

CLIMATOLOGY/METEOROLOGY/ATMOSPHERE

GEOSCIENTIFIC INFORMATION

Instrument

CORING DEVICES

MMS > Meteorological Measurement System

GPS > Global Positioning System

GPR > Ground Penetrating Radar

Project

LTER > Long-Term Ecological Research

LGP > Latitudinal Gradient Project

Quality The project is currently ongoing and some of the data is available in various databases which are constantly changing. The investigator is the best person to contact for location and access to the data.

Data Set Progress

IN WORK

Originating Center

Data Center

Antarctica New Zealand, New Zealand Antarctic Institute, New Zealand

Data Center URL: http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/

Data Center Personnel
Name: SHULAMIT GORDON Phone: +64 3 358 0200 Fax: +64 3 358 0211 Email: s.gordon at antarcticanz.govt.nz Contact Address: Antarctica New Zealand Private Bag 4745 City: Christchurch Country: New Zealand

Distribution

Distribution Media: HTTP

Distribution Size: 36 kb

Distribution Format: excel

Fees: free

Personnel

JOHN GIBSON

Role: INVESTIGATOR

Role: TECHNICAL CONTACT

Role: DIF AUTHOR

Phone: +61 3 6226 7488

Fax: +61 3 6226 2973

Email: John.gibson at utas.edu.au

Contact Address:

IASOS

Private Bag 77

University of Tasmania

City: Hobart

Province or State: Tasmania

Postal Code: 7001

Country: Australia

Creation and Review Dates

DIF Creation Date: 2001-08-01

Last DIF Revision Date: 2009-06-18

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