The mass loss of glaciers, either polar or Alpine, and ice sheets, poses threats to sea-level rise, water supply, tourism activities, and unique ecosystems but also marks the doom of a priceless cultural and natural heritage. Glaciological archives are unique because they are the only ones to provide information on the past atmospheric composition over the last 800 000 years (EPICA Community members, 2006). Many proxies can be studied from ice cores allowing to document the evolution and variation of the temperature, the dust content, the geomagnetic field, the solar and volcanic activities, the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere, the carbon cycle, etc. Ice cores are valuable and irreplaceable archives, which help us understanding both natural mechanisms and anthropogenic influences. The data obtained from ice cores have yielded meaningful results for models and aided in discovering, confirming, or improving understanding of geophysical or geochemical mechanisms.
On the one hand, ice cores from Alpine glacier allow to investigate the evolution of the atmospheric composition at regional levels. On the other hand, Polar ice cores offer the possibility to study the global climate through glacial/interglacial cycles. Besides, extreme atmospheric events are stored in these glacial archives making it possible, for instance, to decipher the stratospheric or tropospheric origin of past volcanic eruptions or to detect the global deposition of 36Cl produced during the period of the nuclear bomb tests.
This workshop is organized as follow: - An introduction presenting the ice core science from Alpine glaciers to Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, from the late Pleistocene to the last 100 years. We will address notions of proxies, transfer function, and dating. - A second session will be dedicated to the study of one proxy among a list that will be proposed (e.g. CO2, 36Cl/10Be, Δ36(O2), Δ17O, Black carbon, Hg,…). - The last session will allow to discuss the current limitations, unknowns, and the ongoing international projects in the ice core community such as the Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice and the Ice Memory programmes. New and innovative proxies or topics will be presented (extreme solar particle events, microorganisms, organics, past oxidative capacity of the atmosphere…).
** Ice cores, Glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica, Proxies, Paleoclimatology, Anthropocene**
