This award is for support for a program to make high resolution studies of variations in the concentration of methane, the oxygen- isotope composition of paleoatmospheric oxygen, and the total gas content of deep Antarctic ice cores. Studies of the concentration and isotopic composition of air in the firn of the Antarctic ice sheet will also be continued. One objective of this work is to use the methane concentration and oxygen-isotope composition of oxygen of air in ice as time-stratigraphic markers for the precise intercorrelation of Greenland and Antarctic ice cores as well as the correlation of ice cores to other climatic records. A second objective is to use variations in the concentration and interhemispheric gradient of methane measured in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores to deduce changes in continental climates and biogeochemistry on which the atmospheric methane distribution depends. A third objective is to use data on the variability of total gas content in the Siple Dome ice core to reconstruct aspects of the glacial history of West Antarctica during the last glacial maximum. The fourth objective is to participate in collaborative studies of firn air chemistry at Vostok, Siple Dome, and South Pole which will yield much new information about gas trapping in ice as well as the concentration history and isotopic composition of greenhouse gases, oxygen, trace biogenic gases and trace anthropogenic gases during the last 100 years.
