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Antarctic Wind Engineering deals with the effects of wind on the built environment. The assessment of wind induced forces, wind resource and wind driven snowdrifts are the main tasks for a wind engineer when participating on the design of an Antarctic building. While conventional Wind Engineering techniques are generally applicable to the Antarctic environment, there are some aspects that require further analysis due to the special characteristics of the Antarctic wind climate and its boundary layer meteorology. <p>The first issue in remote places like Antarctica is the lack of site wind measurements and meteorological information in general. In order to complement this shortage of information various meteorological databases have been surveyed. Global Reanalyses, produced by the European Met Office ECMWF, and RACMO/ANT mesoscale model simulations, produced by the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research of Utrecht University (IMAU), have been validated versus independent observations from a network of 115 automatic weather stations. The resolution of these models, of some tens of kilometers, is sufficient to characterize the wind climate in areas of smooth topography like the interior plateaus or the coastal ice shelves. In contrast, in escarpment and coastal areas, where the terrain gets rugged and katabatic winds are further intensified in confluence zones, the models lack resolution and underestimate the wind velocity. <p>The Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) is characterized by the presence of strong katabatic winds that are generated by the presence of surface temperature inversions in sloping terrain. This inversion is persistent in Antarctica due to an almost continuous cooling by longwave radiation, especially during the winter night. As a result, the ABL is stably stratified most of the time and, only when the wind speed is high it becomes near neutrally stratified. This thesis also aims at making a critical review of the hypothesis underlying wind engineering models when extreme boundary layer situations are faced. It will be shown that the classical approach of assuming a neutral log-law in the surface layer can hold for studies of wind loading under strong winds but can be of limited use when detailed assessments are pursued. <p>The Antarctic landscape, mostly composed of very long fetches of ice covered terrain, makes it an optimum natural laboratory for the development of homogeneous boundary layers, which are a basic need for the formulation of ABL theories. Flux-profile measurements, made at Halley Research Station in the Brunt Ice Shelf by the British Antarctic Survery (BAS), have been used to analyze boundary layer similarity in view of formulating a one-dimensional ABL model. A 1D model of the neutral and stable boundary layer with a transport model for blowing snow has been implemented and verified versus test cases of the literature. A validation of quasi-stationary homogeneous profiles at different levels of stability confirms that such 1D models can be used to classify wind profiles to be used as boundary conditions for detailed 3D computational wind engineering studies. <p>A summary of the wind engineering activities carried out during the design of the Antarctic Research Station is provided as contextual reference and point of departure of this thesis. An elevated building on top of sloping terrain and connected to an under-snow garage constitutes a challenging environment for building design. Building aerodynamics and snowdrift management were tested in the von Karman Institute L1B wind tunnel for different building geometries and ridge integrations. Not only for safety and cost reduction but also for the integration of renewable energies, important benefits in the design of a building can be achieved if wind engineering is considered since the conceptual phase of the integrated building design process.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Antarctic mass balance is mainly controlled by surface mass balance (SMB, i.e. the net effect of precipitations at the surface of the ice sheet) and ice discharge at its margins, mostly through ice shelves. These floating ice bodies made from ice flowing from the continent to the ocean are buttressed by ice rises (elevation of the sea floor on which ice shelf re-grounds) such as the Derwael Ice Rise (DIR) in Dronning Maud Land (DML). In addition to this role important to consider in the future contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, ice rises are also “climate dipsticks” helping to reconstruct the climate of the past centuries to millennia at high resolution. Due to their coastal location, they witness the changes happening there more rapidly than inland. Furthermore, their internal stratigraphy forms arches that allow to assess their stability, to date their own formation and therefore, in some cases, to constrain the past extension of the ice sheet at the scale of several millennia. As part of the IceCon project :Constraining ice mass changes in Antarctica, this thesis aimed to drill a 120 m ice core (named IC12 for the IceCon project, 2012) at the divide of the DIR and perform physico-chemical analyses to study its density and its internal annual layering with the aim of reconstructing SMB of the last two centuries. We also recorded a virtual image of the borehole using an optical televiewer (OPTV) to assess the ability of this instrument to reconstruct a density profile and measure vertical strain rates when the logging is repeated in the same borehole after a sufficient period of time (here, 2 years).The results show a general increase in snow accumulation rates (SMB) of 30-40% during the 20th century, particularly marked during the last 20-50 years. SMB variability is governed to a large extent by atmospheric circulation and to a lesser extent by variations in sea ice cover. The vertical velocity profile measured from repeat borehole OPTV was applied to refine SMB correction and the results fall in the error range of the corrections made using a model previously developed to study the DIR’s stability. This thesis also contributed to characterizing the spatial variability of SMB across the DIR by dating internal reflection horizons (IRHs), former surfaces of the DIR buried under subsequent snow layers and detected using radio-echo-sounding, and by measuring the density profile of IC12. SMB is found to be 2.5 times higher on the upwind slope than on the downwind slope due to the orographic effect. This pattern is regularly observed on ice rises in DML and stresses the importance of adopting a sufficient spatial resolution (5 km) in climate models.Finally, the technical developments allowing to rapidly reconstruct a density profile from the OPTV image of a borehole contributed to improving our knowledge of two features of Antarctic ice shelves, namely melt ponds, influencing surface mass balance and subglacial channels, influencing basal mass balance. Specifically, the results show that density is 5 % higher in surface trenches associated with subglacial channels, and that ice below melt ponds can reach the density of bubble-free ice due to melting and refreezing processes, with implications on ice shelf viscosity. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In a warming world, glaciers and ice sheets have an increasingly large influence on the environment, particularly through their contribution to sea level rise. Their response to anthropogenic climate change, in addition to natural variability, has a critical impact on dependent populations and will be key to predict future climates. Understanding the past natural transitions is also important as if the natural variability of the climate system is not well understood, we stand little change of accurately predicting future climate changes, especially in the context of rapid global warming. Ice cores represent the best time capsules for the recovery of paleo-climate informations. For that, the recovery of a suitable 1.5 million-year-old ice core in Antarctica is fundamental to better understand the natural climate reorganisation which occurred between 0.9 and 1.2 Ma. Constraining the englacial and basal temperature evolution of glaciers and ice sheets through time is the first step in understanding their temporal stability and therefore potential impacts on climate. Furthermore, obtaining the best constraints on basal conditions is essential as such million-year-old ice will be located very near to the bedrock, where the thermal regime has the strongest impact. However, measurements of current englacial and basal temperature have only been obtained at a few drill sites for glaciers and ice sheets. We must therefore turn to thermodynamical models to provide theoretical and statistical constraints on governing thermal processes. Thermodynamical models rely on a suite of governing equations, which we describe in this thesis. Our first study area is the McCall glacier, in Alaska (USA), where we show that the glacier cooled down in the warming climate of the last 50 years using a 1D thermodynamical model. We calculate the present-day englacial temperature distribution using recently acquired data in the form of englacial temperature measurements and radio-echo sounding surveys of the glacier. We show the important of absence of latent heat release due to the refreezing of meltwater inside an active surface layer and reconstruct the last 50 years of equilibrium line altitude (ELA) elevation changes. In the context of Beyond Epica Oldest Ice, a European project aimed at recovering a 1.5 million year-old ice core, we propose for the first time a map of the location of adequate drilling sites for the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. We use a 3D thermomechanical model to calculate a new basal temperature map of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, as well as a 1D thermodynamical model to constrain the poorly known geothermal heat flux (GHF). These combined model runs use the latest acquired data sets for the GHF, ice flow velocity, ice thickness and subglacial lakes. In order to take into account 2 Ma of Antarctic climate history, we use a transient 1D thermodynamical model to provide constraints on GHF by calculating the maximum value of GHF allowed to keep frozen basal conditions everywhere underneath the ice sheet. These values are then statistically compared to published GHF data sets to propose a probabilistic map of frozen and thawed bedrock locations. This transient model uses high spatial resolution radar data acquired over the Dome Fuji and Dome C regions to examine their likelihood of having preserved 1.5-million-year ice. We define a number of important criteria such as GHF, bedrock variability, ice thickness and other parameter values for Oldest Ice survival. We anticipate that our methods will be highly relevant for Oldest Ice prospection in other areas of the ice sheet that so far remain little or un-surveyed, as well as for the thermal modelling of other glaciers and ice sheets, and in particular, of the Greenland Ice Sheet. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

AbstractAtmospheric dust is a major component of the Earth System. The optical properties of dust and their roles in cloud nucleation processes have a major impact on Earth’s radiative budget and hydrological cycle. Dusts also take part in many biogeochemical cycles in surface waters of the oceans and on land through their capacity to supply key micronutrients (e.g. Fe, P) sustaining primary production. The aim of this thesis is to improve the understanding of dust cycle by creating new and innovative methods allowing to trace the source regions of dust and quantify their respective contributions. We developed a chromatographic method to isolate and analyze six isotopic systems (i.e. Pb, Nd, Sr, Zn, Cu, Fe) widely used to trace dust source areas. We optimized a new method for single, low-mass dust samples and, in doing so, we observed that the usual rock reference materials (RM) used to calibrate isotopic analysis were not representative of dust. In fact, there is little to no RM for dust and therefore, we set out to characterize precisely the isotopic signatures of two new dust reference materials, ATD and BCR-723. The latter two are representative of natural-like and urban-like dust that we propose now as new standards for atmospheric dust studies. We also investigated dust deposition, along a 250-km transect from the NE Antarctic coastline to the Princess Elisabeth Station area. Using dust samples collected from Sigma-2 passive samplers or isolated from snow samples, we determined the morphology, size distribution and chemical composition of the dust samples at the particle-scale using an automated Scanning Electron Microscope coupled to Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). More than 5500 particles were analysed and the results showed that the grain-size distribution was <5 μm. We also observe difference in mineralogy at the coast compared to the inland section of our transect: dominance of quartz and aluminosilicates at the coast and of Fe-Mg silicates near the Sør Rondane. Based on this discrepancy, we interpret the ‘coastal’ dust samples to come from distal source while Fe-Mg silicate rich samples were hypothesized to originate from the nearby Sør Rondane range. To trace the source of those dust samples, we analysed their REE content and developed a whole new statistical approach to trace and quantify their source(s). The idea is to correlate systematically the REE pattern of those samples with, not only, PSA REE pattern from distal and local rocks but also with all their possible mixing combinations. To do so, we used the correlation coefficient (R), Akaike and Bayesian Information Criterion (AIC-BIC) to determine whether a dust sample traces a single or a mixture of multiple PSAs. Using this numerical method, we determined that local inputs of dust from the Sør Rondane mountains dominate the inland-most section of the 250-km transect. In contrast, coastal sampling sites (up to 50 km inland) are influenced by dust coming from Puna-Altiplano, Patagonia and Southern Africa. As such, this work presents the first unambiguous geochemical evidence that Southern African dust reach North East Antarctic coast. Finally, we also revisited the REE-dataset measured in EPICA Dome-C (EDC, Gabrielli et al. [Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010) 265-273]) and EPICA Dronning Maud Land (EDML, Wegner et al. [Climate of the Past 8 (2012) 135-147]) ice cores in order to reconstruct the dust provenance over the last glacial-interglacial interval. Our results showed that,during the Last Glacial Maximum (before 18 kyr BP), dust in both ice cores was predominantly coming from New-Zealand (NZ) with secondary inputs from South-Central Western Argentina (S-CWA) and Patagonia. The glacial-interglacial transition (18-11.6 kyr BP) saw the decline of NZ and S-CWA inputs and the increase of contributions from Patagonia, Southern Africa and Puna Altiplano. The Holocene (after 11.7 kyr BP) is marked by dust inputs coming from Patagonia, Southern Africa and Puna Altiplano while NZ stabilized to a secondary level and S-CWA ceased to supply dust. We demonstrated that variations and relative contributions recorded in ice cores are all related to important climatic changes in source regions having an impact on their capacity to supply dust. Our REE statistical approach provide an unprecedented way to identify and quantify the dust source regions in Antarctic ice core and in doing shed new light of those ‘iconic’ archives of Earth’s climate and atmospheric circulation. / RésuméLes particules atmosphériques (PA) sont un composant majeur du système Terre. Leurs propriétés optiques ainsi que leur rôle au sein des processus de nucléation des nuages ont des impacts majeurs sur le budget radiatif et hydrologique de la terre. Les PA interviennent aussi dans de nombreux cycles biogéochimiques à la surface des océans ou sur terre grâce à leur capacité à fournir des nutriments clés (e.g. Fe, P) soutenant la production primaire. Le but de ce doctorat est d’améliorer la compréhension du cycle des PA en créant de nouvelles méthodes innovatrices permettant de tracer leurs origines et quantifier leurs contributions. Nous avons développé une nouvelle méthode chromatographique optimisée pour les PA afin d’analyser six systèmes isotopiques (i.e. Pb, Nd, Sr, Zn, Cu, Fe) largement utilisés pour tracer l’origine des PA. Afin de combler un manque crucial en terme de matériaux de référence (MR), nous avons quantifié deux nouveaux MR de PA, ATD et BCR-723 (représentatifs des milieux naturels et urbains) et nous les proposons pour toutes les futures études géochimiques de PA. Nous avons aussi étudié les dépositions atmosphériques le long d’un ‘transect’ de 250 km depuis la côte Antarctique jusqu’à la station Belge Princesse Elisabeth. Premièrement, nous avons réalisé des analyses morphologiques et chimiques à l’échelle de la particule à l’aide d’un Microscope Electronique à Balayage à dispersion d’énergie (MEB-EDS). Les analyses ont montré une distribution granulométrique <5 μm ainsi qu’une variation de composition chimique (i.e. minéralogie) depuis la côte jusqu’aux Sør Rondane. Deuxièmement, afin de mieux identifier l’origine de ces PA, nous avons analysé les terres rares (REE) et développé dans son intégralité une nouvelle approche statistique permettant d’identifier les sources ainsi que leurs contributions relatives. Grâce à cela, nous avons déterminé que les échantillons à la côte proviennent du Puna-Altiplano, de Patagonie et du Sud de l’Afrique (SAF). C’est la première fois que des apports du SAF sont formellement identifiés en Antarctique. Finalement, nous avons revisité les data-set de REE des carottes de glace du projet EPICA (EDC et EDML) afin de reconstruire les apports de PA durant la dernière transition glacière/interglaciaire. Nos résultats ont montré que durant la dernière période glaciaire les PA proviennent principalement de Nouvelle-Zélande (NZ) avec des apports secondaires provenant de la partie Sud du centre de l’Ouest Argentin ainsi que de Patagonie. Une transition est marquée entre 18 et 11.6 ka BP jusqu’à un équilibre dès l’Holocène (après 11.7 ka BP) marqué par des apports de sources variées venant de Patagonie, SAF, Puna-Altiplano et NZ. Nous avons aussi démontré que les variations des contributions relatives de sources enregistrées dans les carottes de glaces sont toutes en relation avec des changements climatiques importants au niveau des régions sources impactant leur capacité à générer des PA. Notre approche statistique exploitant les REE apporte une méthode sans précédent pour identifier et quantifier les sources de PA des carottes de glace d’Antarctique et ouvre de nouvelles opportunités sur ces archives du climat et de la circulation atmosphérique de la Terre. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Antarctic debris-covered glaciers are potential archives of long-term climate change. However, the geomorphic response of these systems to climate forcing is not well understood. To address this concern, I conducted a series of field-based and numerical modeling studies in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica (MDV), with a focus on Mullins and Friedman glaciers. I used data and results from geophysical surveys, ice-core collection and analysis, geomorphic mapping, micro-meteorological stations, and numerical-process models to (1) determine the precise origin and distribution of englacial and supraglacial debris within these buried-ice systems, (2) quantify the fundamental processes and feedbacks that govern interactions among englacial and supraglacial debris, (3) establish a process-based model to quantify the inventory of cosmogenic nuclides within englacial and supraglacial debris, and (4) isolate the governing relationships between the evolution of englacial /supraglacial debris and regional climate forcing. Results from 93 field excavations, 21 ice cores, and 24 km of ground-penetrating radar data show that Mullins and Friedman glaciers contain vast areas of clean glacier ice interspersed with inclined layers of concentrated debris. The similarity in the pattern of englacial debris bands across both glaciers, along with model results that call for negligible basal entrainment, is best explained by episodic environmental change at valley headwalls. To constrain better the timing of debris-band formation, I developed a modeling framework that tracks the accumulation of cosmogenic 3He in englacial and supraglacial debris. Results imply that ice within Mullins Glacier increases in age non-linearly from 12 ka to ~220 ka in areas of active flow (up to >> 1.6 Ma in areas of slow-moving-to-stagnant ice) and that englacial debris bands originate with a periodicity of ~41 ka. Modeling studies suggest that debris bands originate in synchronicity with changes in obliquity-paced, total integrated summer insolation. The implication is that the englacial structure and surface morphology of some cold-based, debris-covered glaciers can preserve high-resolution climate archives that exceed the typical resolution of Antarctic terrestrial deposits and moraine records.

Les carottes de glace permettent de reconstruire le climat du passé, à partir entre autre de la composition isotopique de l’eau (δ18O, δ17O et δD). Sur le plateau Est Antarctique, les températures très froides et les faibles accumulations permettent de remonter le plus loin dans le passé (jusqu’à 800 000 ans) mais compliquent l’interprétation du signal isotopique. Premièrement, les reconstructions des variations de température dans les carottes de glace à partir des isotopes de l’eau se basent sur des modèles pour décrire l'évolution de la composition isotopique de la vapeur et de la phase condensée le long du cycle de l’eau. Ces modèles, qui ont été développés au cours des dernières décennies, reposent sur la connaissance de coefficients du fractionnement isotopique associé à chaque transition de phase et sur des hypothèses pour représenter la micro-physique des nuages.Lors de la formation de flocons de neige à basse température, 2 types de fractionnements isotopiques doivent être pris en compte : le fractionnement isotopique à l'équilibre, associé à la transition de phase vapeur-glace et le fractionnement isotopique cinétique lié aux différentes diffusivités des différents isotopes. A basse température, les déterminations des coefficients du fractionnement du fractionnement à l’équilibre présentent d’importantes différences et n’ont jamais pu être mesurées à des températures inférieures à -40°C. Or la température moyenne annuelle à Dome C est de -54°C atteignant jusqu’à -85°C l’hiver. Les diffusivités des différents isotopes quant à elles n’ont jamais été mesurées à des températures inférieures à 10°C. Toutes ces lacunes résultent dans des incertitudes importantes sur le lien entre la composition isotopique et la température dans des conditions comme celles du Plateau Est Antarctique.De plus, dans ces conditions froides et arides, les processus physiques qui affectent la composition isotopique de la neige après la déposition des flocons deviennent importants compte tenu du faible apport annuel de précipitation. Pour estimer l’impact de ces processus de post-déposition sur la composition isotopique, il est nécessaire de bien caractériser le fractionnement isotopique à l’interface neige/atmosphère pour des températures allant jusqu’à -90°C.Afin d’améliorer les reconstructions quantitatives de température l’étude des processus affectant la composition isotopique de la glace à très basse température est donc primordiale. Dans cette optique, ma thèse a été à l’interface entre les études de processus au laboratoire et en Antarctique et le développement instrumental afin de pouvoir réaliser des mesures isotopiques encore inédites, en particulier à très basse humidité. D’un côté, j'ai développé d’un nouveau spectromètre infrarouge aux performances bien au-delà des instruments commerciaux. En effet, la fréquence du laser est stabilisée par rétroaction optique par une cavité ultra-stable jusqu’à un niveau de stabilité de l’ordre du hertz. La lumière est ensuite injectée dans une cavité CRDS hautes performances avec une sensibilité de 10-13 cm-1.Hz-1/2. Ceci permet de mesurer la composition isotopique avec une précision inférieure au ppm.En parallèle, des expériences au laboratoire ont permis de renforcer les connaissances sur les processus affectant les isotopes de l’eau, en particulier le fractionnement lié à la transition de phase vapeur - glace et le fractionnement cinétique lié aux différentes diffusivités des différents isotopes en modélisant le fractionnement lié à la diffusion près d’un point froid. Enfin, durant une campagne en Antarctique, j’ai pu réaliser parmi les premières mesures de la composition isotopique de la vapeur et de la glace en Antarctique et appliquer les modèles physiques des processus à des données de terrain. Ces mesures montrent que le cycle de sublimation/condensation contribue de manière importante à la composition isotopique de la neige sur le plateau Est Antarctique. / Ice cores enable reconstruction of past climates, from among others water stable isotopic composition (δ18O, δ17O et δD). On the East Antarctic Plateau, very cold temperature and low accumulation provide the longest ice core records (up to 800 000 years) but embrangle the interpretation of isotopic composition. First, reconstructions of temperature variations from ice core water isotopic composition are based on models used to describe the evolution of the isotopic composition of the vapour and of the condensed phase over the entire water cycle. These models have been developed during the last decades and depend upon precise determinations of isotopic fractionation coefficients associated to each phase transition and upon hypotheses to describe cloud microphysics.During the formation of snowflakes at low temperature, two types of isotopic fractionations need to be taken into account: equilibrium fractionation, associated to the vapour to ice phase transition and kinetic fractionation associated to the difference of diffusivity of the different isotopes. At low temperature, determinations of equilibrium fractionation coefficients present important discrepancies and have never been realised for temperature below -40°C. However, mean annual temperature at Dome C is around -54°C reaching -85°C in winter. For the diffusivities of the different isotopes, they have never been measured at temperature below 10°C. All these gaps result in important uncertainties on the link between isotopic composition and temperature, especially for cold and dry conditions such as encountered on the East Antarctic Plateau.Furthermore, because of the very low amount of precipitation, physical processes affecting the isotopic composition of the snow after the deposition of snowflakes can results in an important contribution to the isotopic budget. In order to estimate the impact of the post-deposition processes on the water vapour isotopic composition, it is necessary to characterise the isotopic fractionation at the snow/atmosphere interface for temperature down to -90°C.In order to improve isotopic paleothermometer performances, it is primordial to study processes affecting snow isotopic composition. Toward this goal, my Ph-D has been at the interface between monitoring of processes affecting isotopes, both in laboratory experiments and field studies, and instrumental development to push the limits of water vapour isotopic composition trace detection. On one hand, new developments in optical feedback frequency stabilisation applied for the first time to water isotopic composition monitoring provide performances beyond any commercial instrument and can be used for thorough processes studies. The laser frequency is stabilised by optical feedback from an ultra-stable cavity to the hertz level. Then, the light is injected in high performances cavity with a sensibility of 10-13 cm-1.Hz-1/2. This enables measuring isotopic composition with a precision below the ppm level.On the other hand, laboratory experiments have supported theories about isotopic fractionation associated to the vapour to ice phase transition and to kinetic fractionation linked to the difference of diffusivities of the different isotopes. Finally, these physical models have been collated to field measurements realised at Dome C in Antarctica, which are among the first water vapour and snow isotopic composition measurements realised inland Antarctica. These measurements show how important is the contribution of the sublimation condensation cycles to the snow isotopic composition budget on the East Antarctic Plateau.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Subglacial chemical processes in Antarctica are potentially significant contributors to global geochemical cycles, but current understanding of their scale and nature is limited. A sequential chemical extraction procedure was developed and tested to investigate the utility of meteoric 10Be as a tracer for chemical weathering processes beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Subglacial meltwater is widely available under the Antarctic Ice Sheet and chemical constituents within it have the potential to drive geochemical weathering processes in the subglacial environment. Meteoric 10Be is a cosmogenic nuclide with a half-life of 1.39×106 years that is incorporated into glacier ice, therefore its abundance in the subglacial environment in Antarctica is meltwater dependent. It is known to adsorb to fine-grained particles in aqueous solution, precipitate with amorphous oxides, and/or be incorporated into authigenic clay structures during chemical weathering. The presence of 10Be in weathering products derived from beneath the ice therefore indicates chemical weathering processes in the subglacial environment. Freshly emerging subglacial sediments from the Mt. Achernar blue ice moraine were subject to chemical extractions where these weathering phases were isolated and 10Be concentrations therein quantified. Optimization of the phase isolation was developed by examining the effects of each extraction on the sample mineralogy and chemical composition. Experiments on 10Be desorption revealed that pH 3.2-3.5 was optimal for the extraction of adsorbed 10Be. Vigorous disaggregation of the samples before grain size separations and acid extractions is crucial due to the preferential fractionation of the nuclide with clay-sized particles. 10Be concentrations of 2-22×107 atoms g-1 measured in oxides and clay minerals in freshly emerging sediments strongly indicate subglacial chemical weathering in the catchment of the Mt. Achernar moraine. Sediment-meltwater contact in the system was calculated to be on the order of thousands of years, based on total 10Be sample concentrations, local basal melt rates, and 10Be ice concentrations. Strong correlation (R = 0.96) between 10Be and smectite abundance in the sediments indicate authigenic clay formation in the subglacial environment. This study shows that meteoric 10Be is a useful tool to characterize subglacial geochemical weathering processes under the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

No description available.