PAGES International Project Offi ce Sulgeneckstrasse 38 3007 Bern Switzerland Tel: +41 31 312 31 33 Fax: +41 31 312 31 68 [email protected] Text Editing: Leah Christen News Layout: Christoph Kull Hubertus Fischer, Christoph Kull and Circulation: 4000 Thorsten Kiefer, Editors VOL.14, N°1 – APRIL 2006 Ice Core Science Ice cores provide unique high-resolution records of past climate and atmospheric composition. Naturally, the study area of ice core science is biased towards the polar regions but ice cores can also be retrieved from high .pages-igbp.org altitude glaciers. On the satellite picture are those ice cores covered in this issue of PAGES News (Modifi ed image of “The Blue Marble” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov) provided by kk+w - digital cartography, Kiel, Germany; Photos by PNRA/EPICA, H. Oerter, V. Lipenkov, J. Freitag, Y. Fujii, P. Ginot) www Contents 2 Announcements - Editorial: The future of ice core research - Dating of ice cores - Inside PAGES - Coastal ice cores - Antarctica - New on the bookshelf - WAIS Divide ice core - Antarctica - Tales from the fi eld - ITASE project - Antarctica - In memory of Nick Shackleton - New Dome Fuji ice core - Antarctica - Vostok ice drilling project - Antarctica 6 Program News - EPICA ice cores - Antarctica - The IPICS Initiative - 425-year precipitation history from Italy - New sea-fl oor drilling equipment - Sea-level changes: Black and Caspian Seas - Relaunch of the PAGES Databoard - Quaternary climate change in Arabia 12 National Page 40 Workshop Reports - Chile - 2nd Southern Deserts Conference - Chile - Climate change and tree rings - Russia 13 Science Highlights - Global climate during MIS 11 - Greece - NGT and PARCA ice cores - Greenland - NorthGRIP ice core - Greenland 44 Last Page - Reconstructions from Alpine ice cores - Calendar - Tropical ice cores from the Andes - PAGES Guest Scientist Program ISSN 1563–0803 The PAGES International Project Offi ce and its publications are supported by the Swiss and US National Science Foundations and NOAA. 2 Announcements: Ice Core Science Editorial: Past, present and future ice core research Ice core science is still a young fi eld of paleoclimatic and atmospheric research. Essentially, it all began in the 1960s when American, Danish and Swiss researchers retrieved the fi rst deep ice core record from Camp Century, northwestern Greenland. From that point on, it has been a success story, with many national and international deep ice core projects changing our view of the Earth’s climate system. The documentation of unprecedented rapid climate variations in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial (Dansgaard-Oeschger events, named after two pioneers in ice core research), and the quantitative reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations from air bubbles enclosed in the ice, are just two of the most striking examples of how ice core science has advanced our knowledge. The success of ice cores alongside other outstanding paleoclimatic archives, such as marine and lake sedi- ments, tree rings, corals, etc., stems from their high temporal resolution combined with their coverage of many glacial cycles. In addition, the combination of various climatological and atmospheric data streams (temperature, gases, aerosols, etc.) from the same independently dated archive make ice cores extremely valuable. Despite its rather short history, ice core science has gained huge momentum and had a very strong impact on paleoclimatology. It 500 has reached full speed only within the last decade, as refl ected by the extraordinary development of the publication history of ice core related papers (see Figure), which have experienced a six-fold 400 increase in the last 15 years, and by the rapid multiplication of ice core drilling projects in different regions of the globe, bringing new 300 national players such as China, Korea and India into the game. High time to bring together the most important results gained 200 from various research groups worldwide and to think about the future. Accordingly, this issue of PAGES News givesgives anan overviewoverview ofof the results of many of the major ongoing ice core projects, reach- 100 ing spatially from the poles to the equator and temporally from No. of publications/year recent climate variability to paleoclimatology over the last 800,000 0 years. The need to look ahead and shape the future of ice core sci- 1984 1992 2000 2008 ence in multinational collaborations has long been recognized. In Year the last two years, this has led to the “International Partnerships in Figure: Publication history of papers with Ice Core Sciences (IPICS)”, an open planning body of currently 18 the keyword “ice core” from 1987-2005. nations that has identifi ed the most important scientifi c questions Information was retrieved from SCOPUS (www.scopus.com/scopus/home.url). to be addressed in future ice core projects. These questions have been channeled into four IPICS white papers (www.pages-igbp. org/science/initiatives/ipics/), which are also summarized in this issue of PAGES news. The timing of this newsletter is also fi tting, considering the upcoming International Polar Year (IPY). IPY will be the starting line for many of these future ice core projects, which will keep us glaciologists busy for another 10-20 years, and will provide the paleoclimate community with more detailed, quantitative and potentially paradigm-changing ice core results. HUBERTUS FISCHER PAGES Guest Editor Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany hufi [email protected] ��������������������������������������������������� ������������������ ������ ����� ��� ����� ���������� ���������������� ��� ���� ���������� ��� ���� �������� ������������ ��� ����� ����� ���� ��� ������ ����� ����� �� ���� ������ ��� ����������� ����� ���� ����� ��� ���� �������� ������ ���� ���� ��������� �� ����� ��� ������ ����������� �������� ����� ��� ���� ������ ����� ��� ����� ��� ���� ���� �������� ��������� ���������������������������������������������������������������� PAGES NEWS, VOL.14, N°1, APRIL 2006 Announcements 3 contributions to PAGES during their Ababa. He has been active in PAGES time on the committee especially as the PEP III African Coordinator. Inside PAGES in building the community in their Cathy Whitlock (USA), a paleoecolo- home countries, and we gratefully gist, is Professor of Earth Sciences at acknowledge their help and dedica- Montana State University. She has Lately, the PAGES IPO has been tion. An open call for nominations important links to the modeling and buzzing with visitors. Denis-Didier for one additional SSC member will paleo-ecology communities. Rousseau (France) spent a week at close 15 September 2006. We partic- the IPO preparing a Loess-dust activ- ularly encourage nominations of pa- PAGES jobs database ity, Hubertus Fischer (Germany) was leoscientists from Russia and former PAGES free online listing of paleosci- in the offi ce to guest-edit this spe- Soviet Union countries, since this ence jobs has just been expanded to cial issue and work on the new IPICS geographic region is currently under- include a quick and simple form for website, Isabelle Larocque (Canada) represented on the SSC. For details you to add your job offer directly to is helping to establish a new PAG- on the nomination procedure, please the jobs page. Jobs are divided into ES Databoard Working Group and go to: www.pages-igbp.org/people/ categories (PhD, faculty, etc.) and meeting, Dmitry Sonechkin (Rus- sscleaders/nominations.html. will be posted the same day. Post or sia) discussed a contribution to the search for jobs at: www.pages-igbp. PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection, Olga Incoming PAGES SSC members org/services/jobs/. Solomina (Russia) will help to guest- PAGES welcomes four new mem- edit a GPC specialspecial issueissue onon climateclimate bers to its SSC this year. Bette Next issue of PAGES News change in mountain regions, and Otto-Bliesner (USA) is Head of the The next issue of the PAGES news- Bert Rein (Germany) will be here to Paleoclimate Group at NCAR and letter will be published in July. set up the National PAGES Germany Lead Author of the IPCC paleoclimate Please send your general contribu- website. More information about chapter. She brings knowledge and tions to the open section, as well PAGES Guest Scientist Program can experience of climate modeling to as program news, workshop re- be found at: www.pages-igbp.org/ the SSC. Indra Bir Singh (India) is ports and humorous tales from the people/guestscientists.html. Professor of Geology at the Universi- fi eld, to Christoph Kull (kull@pages. ty of Lucknow. He has a background unibe.ch) by 15 May. Guidelines Outgoing PAGES SSC members in terrestrial paleoenvironmental for contributions can be found at At the end of 2005, PAGES Scientifi c science and brings new expertise in www.pages-igbp.org/products/ Steering Committee said farewell to sedimentology to the SSC. Moham- newsletters/instructions.html. Daniel Olago (Kenya), Ashok Singhvi med Umer (Ethiopia), a palynolo- (India), and Olga Solomina (Russia). gist, is Associate Professor of Earth All three members made enormous Sciences at the University of Addis HOLIVAR 2006 Open Science Meeting: Natural Climate Variability and Global Warming 12 - 15 June 2006; Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London, UK The meeting will examine how and why the natural climate system varies and assess the relative importance of natural processes and human activity in explaining global warming. Meeting Themes: The HOLIVAR2006