| Abstract |
Recent efforts to link the isotopic composition of snow in Greenland with meteorological and climatic parameters have indicated that relatively local information such as observed annual temperatures from coastal Greenland sites, as well as more synoptic scale features such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the temperature seesaw between Jakobshaven, Greenland, and Oslo, Norway, are significantly correlated with d18O and dD values from the past few hundred years measured in ice cores. In this study we review those efforts and then use a new record of isotope values from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 and Greenland Ice Core Project sites at Summit, Greenland, to compare with meteorological and climatic parameters. This new record consists of six individual annually resolved isotopic records which have been average to produce a Summit stacked isotope record. The stacked record is significantly correlated with local Greenland temperatures over the past century (r=0.471), as well as a number of other records including temperatures and pressures from specific locations as well as temperature and pressure patterns such as the temperature seesaw and the North Atlantic Oscillation. A multiple linear regression of the stacked isotope record with a number of meteorological and climatic parameters in the North Atlantic region reveals that five variables contribute significantly to the variance in the isotope record: winter NAO, solar irradiance (as recorded by sunspot numbers), average Greenland coastal temperature, sea surface temperature in the moisture source region for Summit (30?-20?N), and the annual temperature seesaw between Jakobshaven and Oslo. Combined, these variables yield a correlation coefficient of r=0.71, explaining half of the variance in the stacked isotope record.
REFERENCE:
Stuiver, Minze; Grootes, Pieter Meiert; Braziunas, TF (1995): The GISP2 d18O Climate Record of the Past 16,500 Years and the Role of the Sun, Ocean, and Volcanoes. Quaternary Research, 44(3), 341-354
White, James WC; Barlow, L K; Fisher, D; Grootes, Pieter Meiert; Jouzel, Jean; Johnsen, Sigfus J; Stuiver, Minze; Clausen, Henrik B (1997): The climate signal in the stable isotopes of snow from Summit, Greenland: Results of comparisons with modern climate observations. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 102(C12), 26425-26440
GRIP/GISP (1997): The Greenland Summit Ice Cores CD-ROM and new data archived since 1998. National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado at Boulder, and World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder Colorado
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