This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This award supports a project to measure the concentration of the cosmogenic radionuclide, Beryllium-10 in the deep WAIS divide ice core. Since cosmogenic radionuclides are one of the key parameters used for absolute dating of the ice core and deriving paleoaccumulation rates, it is essential that these measurements be made quickly and efficiently, and that the information is disseminated as soon as the results are available. The intellectual merit of the project is that it will allow a comparison to be made between the core from WAIS Divide and previously measured cosmogenic radionuclide records from Arctic ice cores, particularly GISP2 and GRIP This project will enable scientists to delineate those processes acting at a local level from those that produce global effects and will provide independent chronological markers to aid in the reconstruction of the WAIS Divide ice core chronology. The cosmogenic 10Be profile can also be used to investigate the possible role of solar activity on climate. The direct comparison of radionuclide concentrations with paleoclimate records in ice cores from different sites will provide more insight in the timing and magnitude of solar forcing of climate. The broader impacts of this project include: (i) the formation of a multi-disciplinary team of collaborators for the interpretation of future analyses of cosmogenic radionuclide data from the WAIS divide and other ice cores. (ii) the involvement and training of graduate and undergraduate students in the large scale project of climate research through detailed studies of ice samples. (iii) the opportunity to highlight to a wide range of lab visitors and students from local K-12 schools the importance of ice core and climate change studies.
