The patterns and causes of arctic decade- to century-scale climate variability are poorly understood, most significantly because annually-dated records of past environmental change from this region are sparse. This award supports the retrieval of a Baffin Island network of climate records spanning the last 500 to 2000 years. Cores will be collected from three lakes. The varve chronologies will be tested rigorously using 210-Pb and bomb radionuclides. Annually-dated time series of fossil pollen, varve thickness, and Ge/Si ratios will be generated. This effort will yield the first network of annually-dated paleoclimate and paleoecological time series from arctic lake sediments. This project will be the first PALE (Paleoclimates for Arctic Lakes and Estuaries) effort to map out the patterns of decade-to century- scale change of the past 1000 years.
