P2C2: Climate and Environmental Variability over the Last Glacial Cycle from Ice Cores in the Western Kunlun Mountains (Tibetan Plateau)

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This award uses funds to conduct a collaborative expedition between The Ohio State University's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) and the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences to recover and analyze four ice cores from the Guliya ice cap (6,700 meters) in the western Kunlun Mountains on the Tibetan Plateau (TP).This project involves a strong and equal research partnership between scientists from the U.S. and China and the opportunity to obtain one of the oldest ice records in the Northern Hemisphere that could help understand natural climate variability. As such, the project will help foster regional international scientific collaborations and support two graduate students and a postdoctoral scholar. Although the Guliya ice cap (GIC) was surveyed and successfully drilled to bedrock at an off-summit site in 1992, logistical and time limitations prevented summit drilling, and few dating techniques were available at that time to help establish a robust timescale beyond 100,000 years Before Present (BP). Recently enhanced logistics and technologies will help the international research team significantly address these former impediments. The short (decadal) to long (millennial) term time series produced over the last 100,000 years could provide a long-term context for climatic, atmospheric and environmental variability in one of the least studied places on Earth. Climate signals over the anticipated Last Glacial Cycle (LGC) time record in these ice cores will be assessed using continuous high-resolution stable isotopic, glaciochemical, dust, trace element, and black carbon measurements. Specifically, the research team will focus on the following objectives: (1) document abrupt climate variations, both past and present, recorded in the GIC and assess how climate has changed over the last quarter century; (2) establish tightly constrained timescales for the Guliya ice cores from both the lower elevation site and the summit; (3) determine the atmospheric and climatological dynamics that allowed the GIC to survive since the Eemian Period (~130,000 ago) while other TP glaciers to the east and south date back only to the Early or Middle Holocene Period, and; (4) assess the regional characteristics of climatic and environmental variability during the Holocene, Last Glacial Stage, Eemian and beyond and how they compare to conditions elsewhere, including the Polar Regions.