Project information
Project aim
Climate records at Law Dome provide a unique record of climate variability and change. These are high-resolution ice core records where the detailed seasonal variations in chemical and physical properties are well-preserved, making these records suitable for calibration with meteorological data. Maintaining the Law Dome ice core record will extend, validate and improve the interpretation of ice core records more generally. This monitoring project ensures that the Law Dome ice core record is maintained and kept up-to-date by recovering regular shallow ice cores at intervals of 3 years or shorter. The project will continue to extend the Law Dome ice core record and will significantly improve the calibration of ice core records with meteorological data, and allow for more robust assessment of recent climate variability and change.
Project milestones
Summary of the season 2024/25
During the 2024/25 Australian Antarctic Program (AAP) season the following scientific advancements were achieved:
- Analytical measurements completed on the Law Dome, Dome Summit South (DSS) ice core collected during the 2021/22 AAP season were shown to:
i. Extend the time-series of ice core chemical and physical core measurements and covers the time-period 2012 to 2022; and to
ii. Overlap with the last previous DSS ice core drilled and collected during the 2016/17 AAP season (from AAS Project 4062)
- The updated and extended DSS ice core record has been used to:
i. Present the first seasonal record of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in Antarctic ice cores;
ii. Enabled the development of a rapid non-suppressed IC-MS/MS method for TFA analysis in ice cores; and to show:
- TFA concentrations increased by 5.8 % per year from 2011 to 2021;
- TFA peaks in September–November suggesting deposition is influenced by the polar vortex (and it's weakening).
The proposed field work to the Law Dome DSS ice core site during the 2024/25 AAP season did not proceed due to operational support not being available at Casey Station.