Eastern Arctic Climate of the Past 2,000 Years: The Varved Lake Sediment Record

Robert F. Anderson    boba@ldeo.columbia.edu (Principal Investigator current)
                    
Abstract        

     The patterns and causes of arctic decade- to century-scale climate
     variability are poorly understood, most significantly because annually-dated
     records of past environmental change from this region are sparse.  This award
     supports the retrieval of a Baffin Island network of climate records spanning
     the last 500 to 2000 years.  Cores will be collected from three lakes.  The
     varve chronologies will be tested rigorously using 210-Pb and bomb
     radionuclides.  Annually-dated time series of fossil pollen, varve thickness,
     and Ge/Si ratios will be generated.  This effort will yield the first network
     of annually-dated paleoclimate and paleoecological time series from arctic lake
     sediments.  This project will be the first PALE (Paleoclimates for Arctic Lakes
     and Estuaries) effort to map out the patterns of decade-to century- scale
     change of the past 1000 years.