30,000 Years of Cosmic Dust in Antarctic Ice
Gisela Winckler1* and
Hubertus Fischer2
Polar ice provides an archive for the influx of cosmic dust.
Here, we present a high-resolution, glacial-to-interglacial
record of cosmic dust using helium isotope analysis of the European
Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) ice core drilled
in Dronning Maud Land. We obtained a relatively constant
3He
flux over the past 30,000 years. This finding excludes
3He as
a pacemaker of late Pleistocene glacial cycles. Rather, it supports
3He as a constant flux parameter in paleoclimatic studies. A
last glacial-to-Holocene shift of the
4He/non-sea salt Ca
2+ ratio appears to indicate a glacial-to-interglacial change in
the terrestrial dust source.
2 Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Columbusstrasse, 27568 Bremerhaven, Germany.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: winckler{at}ldeo.columbia.edu
