Johannes Freitag

One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica.

Precise knowledge of the phase relationship between climate changes in the two hemispheres is a key for understanding the Earth’s climate dynamics. For the last glacial period, ice core studies have revealed strong coupling of the largest millennial-scale warm events in Antarctica with the longest Dansgaard–Oeschger events in Greenland through the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. It has been unclear, however, whether the shorter Dansgaard–Oeschger events have counterparts in the shorter and less prominent Antarctic temperature variations, and whether these events are linked by the same mechanism. Here we present a glacial climate record derived from an ice core from Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, which represents South Atlantic climate at a resolution comparable with the Greenland ice core records. After methane synchronization with an ice core from North Greenland, the oxygen isotope record from the Dronning Maud Land ice core shows a one-to-one coupling between all Antarctic warm events and Greenland Dansgaard–Oeschger events by the bipolar seesaw6. The amplitude of the Antarctic warm events is found to be linearly dependent on the duration of the concurrent stadial in the North, suggesting that they all result from a similar reduction in the meridional overturning circulation.

A key source area and constraints on entrainment for basin‐scale sediment transport by Arctic sea ice

Combining field measurements, remote sensing and numerical modelling, a key site for ice entrainment and basinwide dispersal of sediments by sea ice has been identified near the New Siberian Islands. The total ice-bound sediment export of 18.5 x 10(6) t for an entrainment event documented in 1994/95 is of the same order of magnitude as annual sediment supply to the deep sea sector of the Eurasian Arctic and the Greenland Sea. Satellite imagery and ancillary data indicate that ice advection from this source may play an important role in sedimentation downstream in the Transpolar Drift.

Meltwater circulation and permeability of Arctic summer sea ice derived from hydrological field experiments

ABSTRACTPermeability and meltwater flow have been studied in sea ice in the Siberian and central Arctic during the summers of 1995 and 1996. A bail-test technique has been adapted to allow for measurements of in-situ permeability, found to range between 1011 and 108 m2. Permeability varied by about a factor of 2 between 1995 (above-normal melt rates) and 1996 (below-normal melt rates). Release of fluorescent tracers (Fluoresceine, Rhodamine) furthermore allowed the derivation of flow velocities and assessment of the relevant driving forces. Hydraulic gradients in rough ice and wind stress in ponded ice were found to be particularly important, driving meltwater over distances of several m day1. The mid- to late summer ice was found permeable enough to completely divert meltwater from the surface into the ice interior. It could be shown, however, that lower permeabilities of the upper ice layers as well as refreezing of meltwater are associated with significantly lower permeabilities, in particular during the early melt season, fostering development of surface melt ponds.

Microstructure mapping: a new method for imaging deformation- induced microstructural features of ice on the grain scale

This work presents a method of mapping deformation-related sublimation patterns, formed on the surface of ice specimens, at microscopic resolution (3-4 mm pixel -1 ). The method is based on the systematic sublimation of a microtomed piece of ice, prepared either as a thick or a thin section. The mapping system consists of an optical microscope, a CCD video camera and a computer-controlled xy-stage. About 1500 images are needed to build a high-resolution mosaic map of a 4.5 9 cm section. Mosaics and single images are used to derive a variety of statistical data about air inclusions (air bubbles and air clathrate hydrates), texture (grain size, shape and orientation) and deformation-related features (subgrain boundaries, slip bands, subgrain islands and loops, pinned and bulged grain boundaries). The most common sublimation patterns are described, and their relevance for the deformation of polar ice is briefly discussed.

Microstructure dependent densification of polar firn derived from X-ray microtomography

The densification of dry polar snow and firn results in a continuous increase of density with depth accompanied by significant density fluctuations within seasonal layers. Density measurements of high spatial resolution reveal a persistent minimum of density fluctuations in the vicinity of the snow-firn transition (0.55-0.65 g cm -3 ) in firn-core records. In this study we give an explanation for the fluctuation minimum by applying a new method of X-ray microtomography to obtain three-dimensional (3-D) structural data of a Greenland firn core. At 13 different depths between 10 and 78 m a set of 16 samples of 40 cm total length for each depth interval was measured. A reconstructed firn segment of 40 cm covers 1-2 years of snow accumulation. Using digital image analysis techniques, different structural parameters are estimated including 3-D pore and particle sizes and specific surface areas. It is shown that the densification rates of snow and firn layers consisting of coarse particles are much higher than those consisting of fine particles within the same depth interval. This causes a density crossing of fine- and coarse-grained layers with a minimum of density variations at the crossover point. This crossing-over implies that formerly dense layers in the seasonal density signal are not of the same origin as dense layers in the deeper part of the firn column and that the seasonal density signal will totally change shape with depth. It is speculated that in coarse- and fine-grained firn the dominant mechanism of densification acts over different regimes of density.

The impact of accumulation rate on anisotropy and air permeability of polar firn at a high-accumulation site

The first three-dimensional properties of polar firn obtained by X-ray microtomography are used to study the microstructure of snow on a 15 m deep firn core from West Antarctica. The snow is found to undergo coarsening down to approximately 2.5 m depth before grain growth and densification become the prevalent mechanisms of microstructure change. In contrast to previous assumptions, distinct anisotropy of the ice and pore geometry is observed throughout the profile, with a maximum at 2.5 m depth. The air permeability and the degree of anisotropy vary with depth and can be linked to short-term changes in accumulation rate via the residence time for which a certain snow layer stays in the uppermost 2.5 m. Patterns of the degree of anisotropy and air permeability of buried polar firn are relative indicators of past accumulation rates.

Distribution of air bubbles in the EDML and EDC (Antarctica) ice cores, using a new method of automatic image analysis

Air bubbles in ice cores play an essential role in climate research, not only because they contain samples of the palaeoatmosphere, but also because their shape, size and distribution provide information about the past firn structure and the embedding of climate records into deep ice cores. In this context, we present profiles of average bubble size and bubble number for the entire EDML (Antarctica) core and the top 600 m of the EDC (Antarctica) core, and distributions of bubble sizes from selected depths. The data are generated with an image-processing framework which automatically extracts position, orientation, size and shape of an elliptical approximation of each bubble from thick-section micrographs, without user interaction. The presented software framework allows for registration of overlapping photomicrographs to yield accurate locations of bubble-like features. A comparison is made between the bubble parameterizations in the EDML and EDC cores and data published on the Vostok (Antarctica) ice core. The porosity at the firn/ice transition is inferred to lie between 8.62% and 10.48% for the EDC core and between 10.56% and 12.61 % for the EDML core.

The connectivity of crystallite agglomerates in low-density firn at Kohnen station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica

Abstract In this study, the three-dimensional (3-D) microstructure of polar firn is investigated by means of X-ray microfocus computer tomography (mCT). Basic topological properties including the Euler and coordination numbers are derived from the reconstructed 3-D volume images. It is shown that sample volumes of about 4 cm3 are representative for polar firn in terms of their connectivity. The connectivity function defined as the change of Euler number with structure size is calculated via image-processing routines. It is used to split the ice phase at small bridges into single crystallite agglomerates. The bond-size distributions and the mean size of the agglomerates are estimated. All μCT measurements were carried out on the uppermost 9 m of a shallow firn core (B35) drilled during the 2005/06 field campaign at Kohnen station, Dronning Maud Land (DML), Antarctica. The results are compared with estimates from classical two-dimensional (2-D) surface section observations. The 3-D approach confirms the linear relationship between coordination number and density which hitherto has only been derived from 2-D observations. Layers of buried snow dunes show a stronger connectivity than layers of moderate crystal size and density. The formation of agglomerates made of crystallites is a common feature of polar firn in DML. It is proposed that the growth of agglomerates leads to reduced critical densities for the transition between the densification regime of grain boundary sliding and plastic deformation.

Layering of surface snow and firn at Kohnen Station, Antarctica - noise or seasonal signal?

The density of firn is an important property for monitoring and modeling the ice sheet as well as to model the pore close-off and thus to interpret ice core-based greenhouse gas records. One feature, which is still in debate, is the potential existence of an annual cycle of firn density in low-accumulation regions. Several studies describe or assume seasonally successive density layers, horizontally evenly distributed, as seen in radar data. On the other hand, high-resolution density measurements on firn cores in Antarctica and Greenland showed no clear seasonal cycle in the top few meters. A major caveat of most existing snow-pit and firn-core based studies is that they represent one vertical profile from a laterally heterogeneous density field. To overcome this, we created an extensive dataset of horizontal and vertical density data at Kohnen Station, Dronning Maud Land on the East Antarctic Plateau. We drilled and analyzed three 90 m long firn cores as well as 160 one meter long vertical profiles from two elongated snow trenches to obtain a two dimensional view of the density variations. The analysis of the 45 m wide and 1 m deep density fields reveals a seasonal cycle in density. However, the seasonality is overprinted by strong stratigraphic noise, making it invisible when analyzing single firn cores. Our density dataset extends the view from the local ice-core perspective to a hundred meter scale and thus supports linking spatially integrating methods such as radar and seismic studies to ice and firn cores.

Extraction and parametrization of grain boundary networks in glacier ice, using a dedicated method of automatic image analysis

Microstructure analysis of polar ice cores is vital to understand the processes controlling the flow of polar ice on the microscale. This paper presents an automatic image processing framework for extraction and parametrization of grain boundary networks from images of the NEEM deep ice core. As cross‐section images are acquired using controlled surface sublimation, grain boundaries and air inclusions appear dark, whereas the inside of grains appears grey. The initial segmentation step of the software is to separate possible boundaries of grains and air inclusions from background. A Machine learning approach is utilized to gain automatic, reliable classification, which is required for processing large data sets along deep ice cores. The second step is to compose the perimeter of section profiles of grains by planar sections of the grain surface between triple points. Ultimately, grain areas, grain boundaries and triple junctions of the later are diversely parametrized. High resolution is achieved, so that small grain sizes and local curvatures of grain boundaries can systematically be investigated.