The Ice Memory initiative, led by the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), along with researchers from the University of Fribourg and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council (CNR), conducted an analysis of ice cores extracted from the Corbassière glacier at Grand Combin in the canton of Valais in 2018 and 2020.
Unfortunately, the Corbassière glacier in the Grand Combin massif can no longer provide reliable information about past climate and air pollution due to the rapid melting of alpine glaciers. This conclusion was drawn by Margit Schwikowski, head of the Laboratory for Environmental Chemistry at PSI, and Carla Huber, Ph.D. student and lead author of the study, after comparing the signatures of particulate matter trapped in the ice’s annual layers.
Glaciers are an invaluable resource for climate research, preserving climatic conditions and atmospheric compositions of past ages in their ice. They serve as a climate archive for research, similar to tree rings and ocean sediments.
Typically, the amount of particle-bound trace substances in ice fluctuates with the seasons, with higher concentrations in summer and lower in winter. The 2018 ice core showed these fluctuations as expected, but the 2020 core, drilled under the leadership of PSI researcher Theo Jenk, displayed a flatter curve indicating lower concentrations of trace substances deeper in the ice. This was reported by Schwikowski’s team in their study.
2024-01-26 08:41:03
Original from phys.org