Solid and liquid particulate material are emitted or injected to the atmosphere by many natural processes including volcanism, dust storms, and breaking of ocean waves. Gases are emitted from the ocean, wetlands, and soils. As Earth-surface conditions change, the fluxes of these materials change. These materials ultimately are deposited on Earth's surface by processes including impaction, sedimentation and scavenging by precipitation – snow, rain, fog. Archives of this deposition include snow and glacial ice, ombrotrophic peat, and lake sediments. The time scale of these archives spans hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years. The goals of the research are, through chemical and isotopic characterization of material in the archives, to yield diagnostic information about the:
- source(s) of deposited material
- strength of Earth-surface processes such as wind speed
- location of high or low pressure atmospheric cells
- volcanism
- history of air pollution
- air mass trajectories
- conditions at the site of deposition
Many of these types of inferences enable reconstruction of Earth's physical and chemical climate.
Faculty
George Jacobson, Karl Kreutz, Paul Mayewski, Steve NortonResearch
Current projects include:
Lake sediment core.
George Jacobson
Paleoclimate and pollution history from a Mount Logan, Yukon Territory Ice Core
Karl Kreutz
Paleoclimate reconstructions from a Mount Everest Ice Core
Paul Mayewski
The Holocene and Recent history of Hg deposition to Caribou Bog, Maine
Steve Norton
Ice core showing tephra layers