20th-Century doubling in dust archived in an Antarctic Peninsula ice core parallels climate change and desertification in South America

Crustal dust in the atmosphere impacts Earth's radiative forcing directly by modifying the radiation budget and affecting cloud nucleation and optical properties, and indirectly through ocean fertilization, which alters carbon sequestration. Increased dust in the atmosphere has been linked to d...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 104; no. 14; pp. 5743 - 5748
Main Authors McConnell, Joseph R, Aristarain, Alberto J, Banta, J. Ryan, Edwards, P. Ross, Simões, Jefferson C
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 03.04.2007
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Aluminum
Antarctic Regions
Atmospherics
Biodiversity
Climate
Climate change
Core samples
Desert Climate - adverse effects
Desertification
Dust
Environmental impact
Global warming
Human influences
Ice
Ice - analysis
Ice cores
Marine
Physical Sciences
Sea water
South America
Southern hemisphere
Summer
Antarctic Regions
South America
Antarctic Peninsula
PSW, Antarctica, Antarctic Peninsula
PSW, Argentina, Patagonia
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Summary:Crustal dust in the atmosphere impacts Earth's radiative forcing directly by modifying the radiation budget and affecting cloud nucleation and optical properties, and indirectly through ocean fertilization, which alters carbon sequestration. Increased dust in the atmosphere has been linked to decreased global air temperature in past ice core studies of glacial to interglacial transitions. We present a continuous ice core record of aluminum deposition during recent centuries in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, the most rapidly warming region of the Southern Hemisphere; such a record has not been reported previously. This record shows that aluminosilicate dust deposition more than doubled during the 20th century, coincident with the [almost equal to]1°C Southern Hemisphere warming: a pattern in parallel with increasing air temperatures, decreasing relative humidity, and widespread desertification in Patagonia and northern Argentina. These results have far-reaching implications for understanding the forces driving dust generation and impacts of changing dust levels on climate both in the recent past and future.
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Edited by Inez Y. Fung, University of California, Berkeley, and approved February 9, 2007
Author contributions: J.R.M., A.J.A., and J.C.S. designed research; J.R.M., A.J.A., J.R.B., P.R.E., and J.C.S. performed research; J.R.M. and P.R.E. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.R.M. and A.J.A. analyzed data; and J.R.M. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0607657104