ABSTRACT: Some aspects of climatic change in the High Arctic during the Holocene as deduced from ice cores

CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
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Abstract

Time series of climate-related variables obtained from Greenland and Arctic Canada are presented and compared to each other and to other climate-related time series. Oxygen isotope ratios from the Devon Island Ice Cap are shown to provide a detailed proxy temperature record of a 2-3°C cooling over the last 5000 years. They also contain variations in anti-phase with 14C production rates, thus lending some support to the solar-constant theory of climate change. Insoluble micro-particle concentrations and acidity of the Devon ice core samples are nearly constant over the last 5000 years, suggesting that atmospheric turbidity and volcanic activity have not been the primary controlling mechanisms in the cooling since the climatic optimum 5000 years ago. There is a significant trend of decreasing ionic content of the ice, which is explainable in terms of decreasing availability of marine-derived salts and sulphates and/or decreasing cloudiness over the 5000 years of record. The data representing the last 500 years are examined in detail and both the d (180), and the varying amounts of ice layering, attest to the unique coldness of the Little Ice Age some 200 years ago, and the equally unique warmth of the first half of the present century. A preliminary study of acid layers, d (180), and melt layers in the cores, lead the authors to conclude that it is dangerous to assume that volcanic activity has caused major temperature fluctuations in ths 500-year interval.

Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology