Climatic variability in Princess Elizabeth Land (East Antarctica) over the last 350 years Alexey Ekaykin, Diana Vladimirova, Vladimir Lipenkov, Valérie Masson-Delmotte To cite this version: Alexey Ekaykin, Diana Vladimirova, Vladimir Lipenkov, Valérie Masson-Delmotte. Climatic vari- ability in Princess Elizabeth Land (East Antarctica) over the last 350 years. Climate of the Past, European Geosciences Union (EGU), 2017, 13 (1), pp.61-71. 10.5194/CP-13-61-2017. hal-03104045 HAL Id: hal-03104045 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03104045 Submitted on 11 Jan 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Clim. Past, 13, 61–71, 2017 www.clim-past.net/13/61/2017/ doi:10.5194/cp-13-61-2017 © Author(s) 2017. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Climatic variability in Princess Elizabeth Land (East Antarctica) over the last 350 years Alexey A. Ekaykin1,2, Diana O. Vladimirova1,2,a, Vladimir Y. Lipenkov1, and Valérie Masson-Delmotte3 1Climate and Environmental Research Laboratory, Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St Petersburg, Russia 2Institute of Earth Sciences, Saint Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia 3Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement – IPSL, UMR 8212, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ-Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France anow at: Center for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark Correspondence to: Alexey A. Ekaykin ([email protected]) Received: 2 July 2016 – Published in Clim. Past Discuss.: 8 July 2016 Revised: 2 December 2016 – Accepted: 20 December 2016 – Published: 16 January 2017 Abstract. We use isotopic composition (δD) data from six lates with a low-frequency component of IOD and suggest sites in Princess Elizabeth Land (PEL) in order to reconstruct that the IOD mode influences the Antarctic climate by mod- air temperature variability in this sector of East Antarctica ulating the activity of cyclones that bring heat and moisture over the last 350 years. First, we use the present-day instru- to Antarctica. We also compare PEL2016 with other Antarc- mental mean annual surface air temperature data to demon- tic stacked isotopic records. This work is a contribution to strate that the studied region (between Russia’s Progress, the PAGES (Past Global Changes) and IPICS (International Vostok and Mirny research stations) is characterized by uni- Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences) Antarctica 2k projects. form temperature variability. We thus construct a stacked record of the temperature anomaly for the whole sector for the period of 1958–2015. A comparison of this series with the Southern Hemisphere climatic indices shows that 1 Introduction the short-term inter-annual temperature variability is primar- ily governed by the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) and Inter- While understanding the behaviour of the Antarctic climate decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) modes of atmospheric vari- system is crucial in the context of present-day global en- ability. However, the low-frequency temperature variability vironmental changes, key gaps arise from limited observa- (with period > 27 years) is mainly related to the anoma- tions. Prior to the International Geophysical Year (1955– lies of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) mode. We then con- 1957), the primary sources of climatic data were ice core struct a stacked record of δD for the PEL for the period of records. Deep ice cores have provided a wealth of climatic 1654–2009 from individual normalized and filtered isotopic and environmental information covering glacial–interglacial records obtained at six different sites (“PEL2016” stacked variations of the past 800 000 years (EPICA, 2004). How- record). We use a linear regression of this record and the ever, the spatio-temporal characteristics of Antarctic climate stacked PEL temperature record (with an apparent slope variability in the most recent centuries remains poorly known of 9 ± 5.4 ‰ ◦C−1) to convert PEL2016 into a temperature and understood (Jones et al., 2016; PAGES 2k Consortium, scale. Analysis of PEL2016 shows a 1 ± 0.6 ◦C warming in 2013). this region over the last 3 centuries, with a particularly cold The network of ice core records spanning the last cen- period from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. A peak of turies is distributed highly unevenly. Quite extensive cover- cooling occurred in the 1840s – a feature previously observed age of some regions of Antarctica, such as West Antarctica in other Antarctic records. We reveal that PEL2016 corre- (Kaspari et al., 2004) or Dronning Maud Land (Altnau et al., 2015; Oerter et al., 2000) contrasts with other regions that re- Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 62 A. A. Ekaykin et al.: Climatic variability in Princess Elizabeth Land Figure 1. The Princess Elizabeth Land sector of East Antarctica. Blue iso-contours display the spatial pattern of surface snow δ18O (Vladimirova et al., 2017). The light blue contour shows the shoreline of subglacial Lake Vostok. Yellow dots mark the location of indi- vidual records used here. Stars depict the location of former or present research stations. main poorly studied. As a result, attempts to reconstruct the 2 Methods climatic variability of the whole Antarctic continent (Jones et al., 2016; PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013; Schneider et al., 2.1 Ice core data 2006; Frezzotti et al., 2013) are limited by the lack of avail- In this study we use data from six individual records obtained able data. in Princess Elizabeth Land (Fig. 1, Table 1). In our previous work we summarized available isotopic The designation “105 km” (67.433◦ S and 93.383◦ E, time data for the vicinity of Vostok Station in order to construct a interval 1757–1987) refers to a 727 m ice core drilled in 1988 robust stack climatic record over the past 350 years (Ekaykin about 105 km inland from Mirny Station by specialists from et al., 2014). Here we present a new stacked climate record the St Petersburg Mining Institute. The isotopic content was for Princess Elizabeth Land (PEL), the territory located be- measured in the late 1980s at the Laboratoire des Sciences tween the Russian stations of Progress, Vostok and Mirny, du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) with a resolution East Antarctica. This record is based on water stable isotope of 1 m. In 2013, the upper 109 m of the core were remea- data from six sites and spans the last 350 years (Fig. 1). We sured at the Climate and Environmental Research Labora- note an imperfect correlation between the stacked isotopic tory (CERL), with a depth resolution of 5 cm. This core is record and regional surface air temperature variations, un- the only one in which the accumulation rate allows the an- derlying the fact that the isotopic content of precipitation is nual layers to be preserved in the snow thickness, so the core not simply a proxy of temperature but rather a parameter that was dated by layer counting. The initial dating was then ad- covaries with the local climate in a manner similar to tem- justed using the reference horizon of the 1816 Tambora vol- perature (Steig et al., 2013). canic eruption, identified from electrical conductivity mea- We also highlight significant relationships between re- surements (ECMs) (Vladimirova and Ekaykin, 2014). As a gional climate and large-scale modes of variability of the result, a record of the annual accumulation rate is available. Southern Hemisphere. The designation “400 km” (69.95◦ S and 95.617◦ E, 1254– Section 2 describes our data and methods. Section 3 is fo- 1987) refers to an ice core drilled in 1988 at the 400th kilo- cused on the results and their discussion before we conclude metre from Mirny Station, down to 150 m depth. Isotopic in Sect. 4. measurements were performed at LSCE on 1 m samples. The core was dated according to the simple Nye depth–age model, taking into account the average accumulation rate at the drilling site (Lipenkov et al., 1998) and the density profile Clim. Past, 13, 61–71, 2017 www.clim-past.net/13/61/2017/ A. A. Ekaykin et al.: Climatic variability in Princess Elizabeth Land 63 of the core. The uncertainty of the dating, estimated with the Nye model, mainly comes from the error of the accumulation rate estimate and is evaluated at about 10 %. As a result, no record of the annual accumulation rate is available. The designation “VRS 2013” (78.467◦ S and 106.84◦ E, 1654–2010) refers to a stack of 15 individual isotopic records from snow pits and shallow cores recovered in the vicinity of Vostok Station (Ekaykin et al., 2014). The data on temporal variability of snow accumulation rate is also available for this site. The designation “NVFL-1” (77.11◦ S and 95.072◦ E, 1711–1944) refers to an 18.3 m firn core drilled from the bottom of a 2.5 m snow pit in 2008 close to Dome B. The chronology was established using the firn density data and the 1816 Tambora volcano ECM peak as a reference hori- zon. The designation “NVFL-3” (76.405◦ S and 102.167◦ E, 1978–2009) refers to a 3.1 m snow pit dug in 2010 in the northern part of subglacial Lake Vostok. It is dated based on snow stratigraphy and identification of the 1993 Pinatubo 2− volcano peak in SO4 vertical profile.