Increasing dust emission from ice free terrain in southeastern Greenland since 2000

Mineral dust plays a key role in both local and global climates. At high latitudes, atmospheric dust can affect ice-nuclei formation, and surface dust can reduce the albedo as well as increase subsequent ice melting. As a proxy for past climate, mineral dust is preserved in ice cores, but few studies have examined deposited dust in ice cores during the Anthropocene, especially after 2000. We measured dust concentrations in an ice core at the southeastern dome in Greenland (SE-Dome), and reconstructed the annual and seasonal dust fluxes during 1960–2014. We find the annual average flux during 1960–2014 to be 34.8 ± 13.5 mg m−2 yr−1, a value about twice that of ice cores further inland. The more recent part of that period, 2000–2014, has the higher annual flux of 46.6 ± 16.2 mg m−2 yr−1. The annual and autumn dust fluxes highly correlate with air temperature in Tasiilaq (r = 0.61 and 0.50, respectively), a coastal location in southeastern Greenland. Our results suggest that the local dust emissions at the coastal region are increasing due to a decreasing seasonal snow-cover area arising from coastal Greenland warming after 2000.