Discovery of argon in air-hydrate crystals in a deep ice core using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 1.98 MB, PDF document

  • Tsutomu Uchida
  • Wataru Shigeyama
  • Ikumi Oyabu
  • Kumiko Goto-Azuma
  • Fumio Nakazawa
  • Tomoyuki Homma
  • Kenji Kawamura
  • Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe

Tiny samples of ancient atmosphere in air bubbles within ice cores contain argon (Ar), which can be used to reconstruct past temperature changes. At a sufficient depth, the air bubbles are compressed by the overburden pressure under low temperature and transform into air-hydrate crystals. While the oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2) molecules have indeed been identified in the air-hydrate crystals with Raman spectroscopy, direct observational knowledge of the distribution of Ar at depth within ice sheet and its enclathration has been lacking. In this study, we applied scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) to five air-hydrate crystals in the Greenland NEEM ice core, finding them to contain Ar and N. Given that Ar cannot be detected by Raman spectroscopy, the method commonly used for O2 and N2, the SEM-EDS measurement method may become increasingly useful for measuring inert gases in deep ice cores.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Glaciology
Volume68
Issue number269
Pages (from-to)547-556
Number of pages10
ISSN0022-1430
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

    Research areas

  • Air hydrate, argon, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, NEEM ice core, scanning electron microscopy

ID: 343344650