The climate signal in the stable isotopes of snow from Summit, Greenland: Results of comparison with modern climate observations.

Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 102, No. C12, p. 26,425-26,439, 1997

J. White, L.K. Barlow
Institute of Alpine and Arctic Research and Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder.
D. Fisher
Glaciology Section, Terrain Sciences Division, Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa, Canada.
P. Grootes, M. Stuiver
Department of Geological sciences and Quaternary Research Center, Washington University Seattle.
J. Jouzel
Laboratoire de Modélisation du Climat et de l'Environnement, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique/Sciences de la Matière, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France.
S.J. Johnsen and H.B. Clausen
Departement of Geophysics, The Niels Bohr Institute of Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics, University of Copenhagen .

ABSTRACT.
Recent efforts to link the icotopic composition of snow in Greenland with meteorological and climatic parameters have indicated that relatively local information such as observed annual temperatures from coastal Greenland sites, as well as more synoptic scale features such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the temperature seesaw between Jakobshaven, Greenland, and Oslo, Norway, are significantly correlated with δ¹⁸O and δD values from the past few hundred years measured in ice cores. In this study we review those efforts and then use a new record of isotope values from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 and Greenland Ice Core Project sites at Summit, Greenland, to compare with meteorological and climatic parameters. This new record consists of six individual annually resolved isotopic records which have been averaged to produce a Summit stacked isotope record. The stacked record is significantly correlated with local Greenland temperatures over the past century (r=0.471), as well as a number of other records including temperatures and pressures from specific locations as well as temperatures and pressure patterns such as the temperature seesaw and the North Atlantic Oscillation. A multiple linear regression of the stacked isotope record with a number of meteorological and climatic parameters in the North Atlantic region reveals that five variables contribute significantly to the variance in the isotope record: winter NAO, solar irradiance (as recorded by sunspot numbers), average Greenland coastal temperature, sea surface temperature in the moisture source region for Summit (30-20 degrees N), and the annual temperature seesaw between Jakobshaven and Oslo. Combined, theese variables yield a correlation coefficient of r=0.71, explaining half of the variance in the stacked isotope record.