From Pre-Bomb Levels to Industrial Times: A Complete tritium record from an alpine ice core and its relevance for environmental studies

摘要

An ice core recovered from a cold glacier in the Swiss Alps (Fiescherhorn Plateau, 4000 m a.s.1.) provides high resolution climatic and environmental proxy data for the last four decades. The stable isotope record indicates that the seasonal variation of the stored precipitation is not remarkably altered by post-depositional processes. By combining it with a tritium record of equally spaced resolution, a much better control of time and seasonality is obtained. This control allows a more quantitative reconstruction of the ice core proxies by comparing them with nearby contemporary instrumental data sets.