IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v411y2001i6837d10.1038_35079043.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Possible displacement of the climate signal in ancient ice by premelting and anomalous diffusion

Author

Listed:
  • A. W. Rempel

    (Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington)

  • E. D. Waddington

    (University of Washington)

  • J. S. Wettlaufer

    (Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
    University of Washington)

  • M. G. Worster

    (Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, University of Cambridge)

Abstract

The best high-resolution records of climate over the past few hundred millennia are derived from ice cores retrieved from Greenland and Antarctica1,2,3. The interpretation of these records relies on the assumption that the trace constituents used as proxies for past climate have undergone only modest post-depositional migration. Many of the constituents are soluble impurities found principally in unfrozen liquid that separates the grain boundaries in ice sheets. This phase behaviour, termed premelting, is characteristic of polycrystalline material4,5. Here we show that premelting influences compositional diffusion in a manner that causes the advection of impurity anomalies towards warmer regions while maintaining their spatial integrity. Notwithstanding chemical reactions that might fix certain species against this prevailing transport, we find that—under conditions that resemble those encountered in the Eemian interglacial ice of central Greenland (from about 125,000 to 115,000 years ago)—impurity fluctuations may be separated from ice of the same age by as much as 50 cm. This distance is comparable to the ice thickness of the contested sudden cooling events in Eemian ice from the GRIP core.

Suggested Citation

  • A. W. Rempel & E. D. Waddington & J. S. Wettlaufer & M. G. Worster, 2001. "Possible displacement of the climate signal in ancient ice by premelting and anomalous diffusion," Nature, Nature, vol. 411(6837), pages 568-571, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:411:y:2001:i:6837:d:10.1038_35079043
    DOI: 10.1038/35079043
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35079043
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35079043?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Craig Loehle, 2004. "Using Historical Climate Data to Evaluate Climate Trends: Issues of Statistical Inference," Energy & Environment, , vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:411:y:2001:i:6837:d:10.1038_35079043. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.