Regional variability of diatoms in ice cores from the Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land, Antarctica

Abstract

The presence of marine microfossils (diatoms) in glacier ice and ice cores has been documented from numerous sites in Antarctica, Greenland, as well as from sites in the Andes and the Altai mountains, and attributed to entrainment and transport by winds. However, their presence and diversity in snow and ice, especially in polar regions, are not well documented and still poorly understood. Here we present the first data to resolve the regional and temporal distribution of diatoms in ice cores, spanning a 20-year period across four sites in the Antarctic Peninsula and Ellsworth Land, Antarctica. We assess the regional variability in diatom composition and abundance at annual and sub-annual resolution across all four sites. These data corroborate the prevalence of contemporary marine diatoms in Antarctic Peninsula ice cores, reveal that the timing and amount of diatoms deposited vary between low- and high-elevation sites, and support existing evidence that marine diatoms have the potential to yield a novel palaeoenvironmental proxy for ice cores in Antarctica.