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Ice cores are powerful archives for reconstructing volcanism as they contain both soluble (i.e. aerosols) and insoluble (i.e. tephra) products of volcanic eruptions and for more recent periods have high-precision annually resolved chronologies. The identification and geochemical analysis of cryptotephra in these cores can provide their volcanic source and latitude of injection, complementing records of sulphur injections from volcanic eruptions developed using continuous flow ice-core analysis. Here, we aim to improve the volcanic record for the Southern Hemisphere using a sampling strategy for cryptotephra identification based on coeval deposition of sulphate and microparticles in ice cores from the interior of East Antarctica covering the Mid-to Late Holocene. In total, 15 cryptotephras and one visible horizon were identified and geochemically characterised. Through comparisons to proximal deposits a range of possible sources were isolated for these horizons including the South Sandwich Islands, South Shetland Islands, Victoria Land (Antarctica) and South America. This new tephra framework contributes to the volcanic history of the region by extending the known geographical range of tephra deposition for previously identified events and providing a potential indication of phases of eruptive activity from key sources. Using the tephra-based source attributions and comparison of the timing of the events to a database of sulphur injections from Holocene volcanic eruptions it is possible to refine injection latitudes for some events, which can lead to improved estimates of their radiative forcing potential. The relatively low magnitude of the volcanic stratospheric sulphur injections related to the events in the tephra framework indicates they would have had a limited impact on Southern Hemisphere climate. Further work is required to improve source attributions for some events and/or to determine the magnitude of sulphur injections for individual events during years w, Ice cores are powerful archives for reconstructing volcanism as they contain both soluble (i.e. aerosols) and insoluble (i.e. tephra) products of volcanic eruptions and for more recent periods have high-precision annually resolved chronologies. The identification and geochemical analysis of cryptotephra in these cores can provide their volcanic source and latitude of injection, complementing records of sulphur injections from volcanic eruptions developed using continuous flow ice-core analysis. Here, we aim to improve the volcanic record for the Southern Hemisphere using a sampling strategy for cryptotephra identification based on coeval deposition of sulphate and microparticles in ice cores from the interior of East Antarctica covering the Mid-to Late Holocene. In total, 15 cryptotephras and one visible horizon were identified and geochemically characterised. Through comparisons to proximal deposits a range of possible sources were isolated for these horizons including the South Sandwich Islands, South Shetland Islands, Victoria Land (Antarctica) and South America. This new tephra framework contributes to the volcanic history of the region by extending the known geographical range of tephra deposition for previously identified events and providing a potential indication of phases of eruptive activity from key sources. Using the tephra-based source attributions and comparison of the timing of the events to a database of sulphur injections from Holocene volcanic eruptions it is possible to refine injection latitudes for some events, which can lead to improved estimates of their radiative forcing potential. The relatively low magnitude of the volcanic stratospheric sulphur injections related to the events in the tephra framework indicates they would have had a limited impact on Southern Hemisphere climate. Further work is required to improve source attributions for some events and/or to determine the magnitude of sulphur injections for individual events during year

Insoluble particles in ice cores record signatures of past climate parameters like vegetation dynamics, volcanic activity, and aridity. For some of them, the analytical detection relies on intensive bench microscopy investigation and requires dedicated sample preparation steps. Both are laborious, require in-depth knowledge, and often restrict sampling strategies. To help overcome these limitations, we present a framework based on flow imaging microscopy coupled to a deep neural network for autonomous image classification of ice core particles. We train the network to classify seven commonly found classes, namely mineral dust, felsic and mafic (basaltic) volcanic ash grains (tephra), three species of pollen (Corylus avellana, Quercus robur, Quercus suber), and contamination particles that may be introduced onto the ice core surface during core handling operations. The trained network achieves 96.8ĝ€ ̄% classification accuracy at test time. We present the system's potential and its limitations with respect to the detection of mineral dust, pollen grains, and tephra shards, using both controlled materials and real ice core samples. The methodology requires little sample material, is non-destructive, fully reproducible, and does not require any sample preparation procedures. The presented framework can bolster research in the field by cutting down processing time, supporting human-operated microscopy, and further unlocking the paleoclimate potential of ice core records by providing the opportunity to identify an array of ice core particles. Suggestions for an improved system to be deployed within a continuous flow analysis workflow are also presented.

Insoluble particles in ice cores record signatures of past climate parameters like vegetation dynamics, volcanic activity, and aridity. For some of them, the analytical detection relies on intensive bench microscopy investigation and requires dedicated sample preparation steps. Both are laborious, require in-depth knowledge, and often restrict sampling strategies. To help overcome these limitations, we present a framework based on flow imaging microscopy coupled to a deep neural network for autonomous image classification of ice core particles. We train the network to classify seven commonly found classes, namely mineral dust, felsic and mafic (basaltic) volcanic ash grains (tephra), three species of pollen (Corylus avellana, Quercus robur, Quercus suber), and contamination particles that may be introduced onto the ice core surface during core handling operations. The trained network achieves 96.8 % classification accuracy at test time. We present the system's potential and its limitations with respect to the detection of mineral dust, pollen grains, and tephra shards, using both controlled materials and real ice core samples. The methodology requires little sample material, is non-destructive, fully reproducible, and does not require any sample preparation procedures. The presented framework can bolster research in the field by cutting down processing time, supporting human-operated microscopy, and further unlocking the paleoclimate potential of ice core records by providing the opportunity to identify an array of ice core particles. Suggestions for an improved system to be deployed within a continuous flow analysis workflow are also presented.

Large volcanic eruptions occurring in the last glacial period can be detected by their accompanying sulfuric acid deposition in continuous ice cores. Here we employ continuous sulfate and sulfur records from three Greenland and three Antarctic ice cores to estimate the emission strength, the frequency and the climatic forcing of large volcanic eruptions that occurred during the second half of the last glacial period and the early Holocene, 60–9 kyr before 2000 CE (b2k). Over most of the investigated interval the ice cores are synchronized, making it possible to distinguish large eruptions with a global sulfate distribution from eruptions detectable in one hemisphere only. Due to limited data resolution and large variability in the sulfate background signal, particularly in the Greenland glacial climate, we only list Greenland sulfate depositions larger than 20 kg km−2 and Antarctic sulfate depositions larger than 10 kg km−2. With those restrictions, we identify 1113 volcanic eruptions in Greenland and 737 eruptions in Antarctica within the 51 kyr period – for which the sulfate deposition of 85 eruptions is found at both poles (bipolar eruptions). Based on the ratio of Greenland and Antarctic sulfate deposition, we estimate the latitudinal band of the bipolar eruptions and assess their approximate climatic forcing based on established methods. A total of 25 of the identified bipolar eruptions are larger than any volcanic eruption occurring in the last 2500 years, and 69 eruptions are estimated to have larger sulfur emission strengths than the Tambora, Indonesia, eruption (1815 CE). Throughout the investigated period, the frequency of volcanic eruptions is rather constant and comparable to that of recent times. During the deglacial period (16–9 ka b2k), however, there is a notable increase in the frequency of volcanic events recorded in Greenland and an obvious increase in the fraction of very large eruptions. For Antarctica, the deglacial period cannot be distinguish

Ice-core timescales are vital for the understanding of past climate; hence they should be updated whenever significant amounts of new data become available. Here, the Greenland ice-core chronology GICC05 was revised for the last 3835 years by synchronizing six deep ice cores and three shallow ice cores from the central Greenland ice sheet. A new method was applied by combining automated counting of annual layers on multiple parallel proxies and manual fine-tuning. A layer counting bias was found in all ice cores because of site-specific signal disturbances; therefore the manual comparison of all ice cores was deemed necessary to increase timescale accuracy. After examining sources of error and their correlation lengths, the uncertainty rate was quantified to be 1 year per century. The new timescale is younger than GICC05 by about 13 years at 3835 years ago. The most recent 800 years are largely unaffected by the revision. Between 800 and 2000 years ago, the offset between timescales increases steadily, with the steepest offset occurring between 800 and 1100 years ago. Moreover, offset oscillations of about 5 years around the average are observed between 2500 and 3800 years ago. The non-linear offset behavior is attributed to previous mismatches of volcanic eruptions, to the much more extensive dataset available to this study, and to the finer resolution of the new ice-core ammonium matching. By analysis of the common variations in cosmogenic radionuclides, the new ice-core timescale is found to be in alignment with the IntCal20 curve (Reimer et al., 2020).

Highlights • Tephra are abundant in NE North America, with 36 unique units deposited between ∼14,000 and the present day. • Source volcanoes are in the Cascades, Alaska, Kamchatka, Kuriles and potentially Japan. • Updated Bayesian modelled ages are presented for key proximal correlative eruptions and newly described tephra. • The tephra link paleoenvironmental records from this region to the Far East, Greenland and Europe. • Correlated source eruption volumes vary widely; this alone cannot explain recorded ash distribution trends. Lakes and bogs in northeastern North America preserve tephra deposits sourced from multiple volcanic systems in the Northern Hemisphere. However, most studies of these deposits focus on specific Holocene intervals and the latest Pleistocene, providing snapshots rather than a full picture. We combine new data with previous work, supplemented by a broad review of the characteristics and ages of potential source regions and volcanoes, to develop the first composite tephrostratigraphic framework covering the last ∼14,000 years for this region. We report new cryptotephra records from three ombrotrophic peat bogs—Irwin Smith (Michigan), Bloomingdale (New York), and Sidney Bog (Maine)—as well as new analyses and age models from previously reported sites, Nordan's Pond Bog (Newfoundland) and Thin-Ice Pond (Nova Scotia). A new tephra (Iliinsky) from the NGRIP and GRIP ice cores is also presented as it can be correlated to new data from these terrestrial records and helps validate radiocarbon age models. We identify 21 new tephra in addition to the 15 already known, several of which cover the entire region – the White River Ash east, Newberry Pumice, Ruppert (NDN-230), and Mazama. For the first time we find Mount St. Helens Yn (ca. 3660 cal yr BP) and a set P tephra (∼3000–2550 cal yr BP), and confirm the presence of Jala Pumice from Volcan Ceboruco, Mexico, and KS1 from Ksudach volcano, Kamchatka. We describe new “ultra-distal” tephra, including th

Understanding the dynamics that drove past abrupt climate changes, such as the Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) events, depends on combined proxy evidence from disparate archives. To identify leads, lags and synchronicity between different climate system components, independent and robust chronologies are required. Cryptotephrochronology is a key geochronological tool as cryptotephra horizons can act as isochrons linking disparate and/or distant records. Here, we investigated marine sediment core MD99-2284 from the Norwegian Sea to look for previously identified Greenland ice core cryptotephra horizons and define time-parallel markers between the archives. We explored potential secondary transport and depositional mechanisms that could hamper the isochronous integrity of such horizons. We identified six cryptotephra layers of which four correlate to previously known Greenland ice core horizons. None of those were identified in other marine cores and thus, this study contributes greatly to the North Atlantic tephra framework tripling the original amount of existing isochrons between ca. 25 and 60 ka b2k. The latter allow a synchronization between MD99-2284 and the Greenland ice cores between ca. 32-40 ka b2k, which is, in the North Atlantic, the shortest time-interval during the Last Glacial Period to be constrained by four independent tephra isochrons. These findings provide essential tephra-based evidence for synchronous and rapid oceanic and atmospheric temperature rises during the Greenland Stadial-Interstadial transitions. Furthermore, it enables us to estimate the average peak-duration of interstadial temperature overshoots at approximately 136 years. As such, this well-targeted high-resolution investigation successfully demonstrates the use of cryptotephra for geochronological purposes in the marine realm.

The last glacial period is characterized by a number of millennial climate events that have been identified in both Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and that are abrupt in Greenland climate records. The mechanisms governing this climate variability remain a puzzle that requires a precise synchronization of ice cores from the two hemispheres to be resolved. Previously, Greenland and Antarctic ice cores have been synchronized primarily via their common records of gas concentrations or isotopes from the trapped air and via cosmogenic isotopes measured on the ice. In this work, we apply ice core volcanic proxies and annual layer counting to identify large volcanic eruptions that have left a signature in both Greenland and Antarctica. Generally, no tephra is associated with those eruptions in the ice cores, so the source of the eruptions cannot be identified. Instead, we identify and match sequences of volcanic eruptions with bipolar distribution of sulfate, i.e. unique patterns of volcanic events separated by the same number of years at the two poles. Using this approach, we pinpoint 82 large bipolar volcanic eruptions throughout the second half of the last glacial period (12-60 ka). This improved ice core synchronization is applied to determine the bipolar phasing of abrupt climate change events at decadal-scale precision. In response to Greenland abrupt climatic transitions, we find a response in the Antarctic water isotope signals (delta O-18 and deuterium excess) that is both more immediate and more abrupt than that found with previous gas-based interpolar synchronizations, providing additional support for our volcanic framework. On average, the Antarctic bipolar seesaw climate response lags the midpoint of Greenland abrupt delta O-18 transitions by 122 +/- 24 years. The time difference between Antarctic signals in deuterium excess and delta O-18, which likewise informs the time needed to propagate the signal as described by the theory of the bipolar seesaw but is

The aim of our study is to analyse physical properties of internal layers of deep ice cores in Greenland (NGRIP and NEEM) and a new ice core record from the East GReenland Ice-core Project (EGRIP) on the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). For this purpose, in the first part of this study, we have established the initial chronology for the EGRIP ice core over the Holocene and the late last glacial period. We rely on conductivity patterns and volcanic events determined by means of dielectric profiling (DEP), electrical conductivity measurements (ECM) and tephra records for the synchronization between the EGRIP, NEEM and NGRIP ice cores in Greenland. We have transferred the annual-layer-counted Greenland ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) timescale from the NGRIP core to the EGRIP ice core by means of 373 match points. The second part of this study compares numerically modelled radargrams and the airborne radar measurements (radio-echo sounding) to understand the recorded physical properties of internal layers towards reflection mechanisms. Synthetic modelling of electromagnetic wave propagation has been applied to the EGRIP, NEEM and NGRIP2 ice cores based on the conductivity and permittivity, as measured at 250 kHz by DEP. For the comparison between synthetic and observed data, we have used radio-echo sounding data from AWI’s multichannel ultra-wideband radar around the EGRIP drill site, that were recorded during the 2018 field season, and the CReSIS data from the University of Kansas around the NEEM and NGRIP2 drill sites. The timescales (depth-age relation from first part of our study) have been transferred to the synthetic and observed radargrams by means of sensitivity studies. We have found that conductivity only explains a fraction of the radar signals in Greenland ice sheet and the orientated fabric is widespread and influences the radar data.

The development of paleoclimatic timescales is of vital importance for the understanding of climate. Ice cores are optimal tools for the construction of a timescale because they record the signal of multiple annually resolved proxies with well preserved stratigraphy. In 2018, the East GReenland Ice Coring Project (EastGRIP) reached a depth of 1760 m, corresponding to an age of approximately 21000 years BP. The newly drilled core has been matched to other Greenland ice cores to adapt the GICC05 ice-core timescale. This provides a chronological basis for the study of the core that is consistent with other Greenland cores. The techniques adopted for matching of the ice cores rely on the assumed synchronicity of deposits from volcanic eruptions, biomass burning events, and solar events [1]. These time markers are essential for the synchronization of different time records as well as for the determination of regional leads and lags occurring at the onset of climatic transitions. The measurements used for volcanic matching are electrical conductivity measurements (ECM) and dielectric profiling (DEP), which were performed directly in the field and then processed to a high precision in depth assignment. Independent matching of DEP and ECM matching was performed to assess the precision of the synchronization before the two records were merged. The strength of the volcanic matching between Greenland ice cores is increased by locating the same Northern Hemisphere volcanic ash deposits (tephra), which possess unique geochemical `fingerprints'. This challenging search is conducted along the length of each core and is particularly useful in the Last Glacial Maximum, where the presence of acidic spikes is scarce both in ECM and DEP data. The transferred timescale is complemented by automated counting of annual layers between the observed tie-points, using annually resolved proxy data measured by chemical Continuous Flow Analysis (CFA). Ultimately, these new results will feed into

We have established the initial chronology for the EGRIP ice core over the Holocene and the late last glacial period. We rely on conductivity patterns and volcanic events determined by means of dielectric profiling (DEP), electrical conductivity measurements (ECM) and tephra records for the synchronization between the EGRIP, NEEM and NGRIP ice cores in Greenland. We have transferred the annual-layer-counted Greenland ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) timescale from the NGRIP core to the EGRIP ice core by means of 373 match points. The second part of this study compares numerically modelled radargrams and the airborne radar measurements (radio-echo sounding) to understand the recorded physical properties of internal layers towards reflection mechanisms. Synthetic modelling of electromagnetic wave propagation has been applied to the EGRIP ice core based on the conductivity and permittivity, as measured at 250 kHz by DEP. For the comparison between synthetic and observed data, we have used radio-echo sounding data from AWI’s multichannel ultra-wideband radar around the EGRIP drill site, that were recorded during the 2018 field season.