This award provides funding for five years of support to participate in the U.S. component of the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (US ITASE). US ITASE is made up of four major research disciplines: meteorology, remote sensing, ice coring, and surface glaciology and geophysics. US ITASE hopes to answer questions about the mass balance over West Antarctica and the influence of major atmospheric circulation systems and oceanic circulation on the moisture flux over West Antarctica. In addition, questions about the controls on climate variations over seasonal, inter-annual, decadal and centennial scales will be addressed. Other factors to be examined by US ITASE relate to the impact of anthropogenic activity on the climate and atmospheric chemistry of West Antarctica as well as the variations in biogeochemical cycling of sulfur and nitrogen compounds over the last 200 years. This project will perform analyses of the glaciochemistry (i.e. major anions and cations) of shallow and intermediate depth ice cores collected on the US ITASE traverses. The ionic composition of polar ice cores provides not only a stratigraphic tool for relative dating but also documents changes in chemical species source emissions and allows characterization of the major atmospheric circulation systems affecting the West Antarctic ice sheet.
