This award supports a program to characterize tephras in Alaska and Siberia in order to better understand the volume, extent, and climatic effects of large volcanic eruptions in the Arctic. The project will fingerprint tephras by major and trace element analytical methods and will develop a chronologic record of tephras that can be used for correlating volcanic ash layers in ice core acquired through the Greenland Ice Sheet Project-2 (GISP2). Estimates of the volume of ash erupted in each event will be important input to climate models because volcanic ash in the atmosphere is known to cause temperature decreases.
