A study on high-resolution seasonal variations of major ionic species in recent snow near the Antarctic Jang Bogo station

Abstract

A continuous series of 60 snow samples was collected at a 2.5-cm interval from a 1.5-m snow pit at a site on the Styx Glacier Plateau in Victoria Land, Antarctica, during the 2011/2012 austral summer season. Various chemical components (δD, δ18O, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Cl−, SO<inf>4</inf>2−, NO<inf>3</inf>−, F−, CH<inf>3</inf>SO<inf>3</inf>−, CH<inf>3</inf>CO<inf>2</inf>− and HCO<inf>2</inf>−) were determined to understand the highly resolved seasonal variations of these species in the coastal atmosphere near the Antarctic Jang Bogo station. Based on vertical profiles of δ18O, NO<inf>3</inf>− and MSA, which showed prominent seasonal changes in concentrations, the snow samples were dated to cover the time period from 2009 austral winter to 2012 austral summer with a mean accumulation rate of 226 kg H2O m−2 yr−1. Our snow profiles show pronounced seasonal variations for all the measured chemical species with a different pattern between different species. The distinctive feature of the occurrence patterns of the seasonal variations is clearly linked to changes in the relative strength of contributions from various natural sources (sea salt spray, volcanoes, crust-derived dust, and marine biogenic activities) during different short-term periods. The results allow us to understand the transport pathways and input mechanisms for each species and provide valuable information that will be useful for investigating long-term (decades to century scale periods) climate and environmental changes that can be deduced from an ice core to be retrieved from the Styx Glacier Plateau in the near future. © 2015 Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute. All rights reserved.