Franz Josef Land, Russia
Franz Josef Land, Russia
In 1996, a new, exciting deep ice drilling program will commence in the high Russian Arctic, on the summit of Kupol Vyetreniy (Windy Dome) on Graham Bell Island (81oN, 64oE). This ice dome has a very symmetrical shape, maximum ice thickness of about 500-550m, and a peak elevation of about 580m.
The archipelago of Franz Josef Land, on the northern rim of the
continental shelf that underlies the Barents Sea, is the northernmost land
mass in the Eastern Hemisphere. Here, the climate is influenced greatly by
the intrusion of Atlantic-derived cyclonic systems that feed moisture into
the region, and as a consequence, Franz Josef Land has unusually mild
summers for its latitude. In the polar night (wintertime), however, the
conditions become extremely harsh, with average temperatures diving
down to -25 to -30oC. This means that Franz Josef Land is at a strategic location for studying changes in sea ice cover in the Arctic, since it lies in the region between the modern-day seasonal maximum (February) and
minimum (September) sea ice cover. Satellite measurements of sea ice
extent are being used in conjunction with stratigraphic profiles of sea-salt
aerosols (Cl-, SO42-) from short cores (up to 24m) drilled in 1994 to develop a transfer function that will allow the ice core sea-salt record to be used as a proxy for changing sea ice cover in the surrounding Barents Sea.
Windy Dome is likely to contain a record of local and regional
conditions extending back to at least the early Holocene (8,000 to 10,000
years),
and it is hoped that glacial stage ice is archived there as well. The
500m+ ice core (to bedrock) will be analyzed over the next few years
following this upcoming field season. For this project, scientists from the
Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) will
join researchers from the OSU Department of Geological Sciences and
Byrd Polar Research Center. Funding is being provided by NASA.
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