Variation of Stable Isotopes in Surface Snow along a Traverse from Coast to Plateau''s interior in East Antarctica and Its Climatic Significance
Variation of Stable Isotopes in Surface Snow along a Traverse from Coast to Plateau’s interior in East Antarctica and Its Climatic Significance

The variations of stable water isotopes of surface snow in east Antarctic Ice Sheet, are discussed by a total of 251 samples, which were taken along a 330 km traverse from Zhongshan Station to the outer edge of the Antarctic plateau and from four snow pits excavated along the route. Analyzing results of the samples showed the expected linear relationship between the parameters ?D and ?18O with slope S1 and intercept d1. When the data set was examined using a sliding window with a width of 5 samples, it was found that there were two areas with different ratios of S1 and d1. The boundary between these two areas occurred at an elevation of about 2,000 m, suggesting two different sources of water vapour. Nearly half (47%) of the fresh-snow samples had negative deuterium excess (d=?D? 8?18O) values, but few of the snow pit samples did, suggesting that variations of ? are quickly smoothed by isotopic diffusion in the near-surface firn. Analysis of the phase relationship between ?D and deuterium excess in the snow pit stratigraphies showed that they were mostly in phase from Jan. 1994 to Sept. 1995, but mostly out of phase from Sept. 1995 to Jan. 1997