Climatic and Environmental Features on Both Sides of the Lambert Glacier Basin
Lambert冰川流域东西两侧气候环境变化

During the 1992-1993 joint Australian-Chinese over-snow traverse on the western Lambert Glacier Basin (LGB), two firn cores were drilled respectively at MGA and LGB16. During the 1996-1997 and 1997-1998 austral summers, two firn cores were drilled respectively at DT001 and DT085 on the eastern LGB. Based on the achievements made during the expeditions, the climatic and environmental features on both sides of the LGB have been studied. Results show that during the past 50 years, the trends of both air temperature and accumulation rate show a slight increase on the east side of the LGB, in contrast to the west side of the LGB. The spatial trends of the accumulation rate measured by accumulation canes at 2 km intervals along the nearly 500 km of the traverse lines on both sides of the LGB are different. Moreover, correlations of δ18O vs T10 along the two sides of the LGB are also different. In addition, the variations of sea salt ion concentrations show different trends in the past 50 years. All the evidences show the Lambert Glacier is a dividing region for the different climatic regimes over the East Antarctic ice sheet, which may be due to different moisture resources resulted from the special local circumfluence such as cyclone activities and local terrain influences. The International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) has its initial aim to reveal an overall spatial pattern of climatic change on Antarctic ice sheet for the past 200 years. This study re-confirms the importance of continental to regional scaled circulation to annual-decadal scaled climatic change in Antarctica.