dc.contributor.author | Criscitiello, Alison S. | | |
Concept link
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dc.coverage.spatial | Amundsen Sea | | | |
dc.coverage.spatial | West Antarctic | | | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-01-27T16:45:40Z | | | |
dc.date.available | 2014-01-27T16:45:40Z | | | |
dc.date.issued | 2014-02 | | | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1912/6402 | | | |
dc.description | Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution February 2014 | en_US | | |
dc.description.abstract | Recent work has documented dramatic changes in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
over the past 30 years (e.g., mass loss, glacier acceleration, surface warming) due largely
to the influence of the marine environment. WAIS is particularly vulnerable to largescale
atmospheric dynamics that remotely influence the transport of marine aerosols to
the ice sheet. Understanding seasonal- to decadal-scale changes in the marine influence
on WAIS (particularly sea-ice concentration) is vital to our ability to predict future
change. In this thesis, I develop tools that enable us to reconstruct the source and
transport variability of marine aerosols to West Antarctica in the past. I validate new
firn-core sea-ice proxies over the satellite era; results indicate that firn-core
glaciochemical records from this dynamic region may provide a proxy for reconstructing
Amundsen Sea and Pine Island Bay polynya variability prior to the satellite era. I next
investigate the remote influence of tropical Pacific variability on marine aerosol transport
to West Antarctica. Results illustrate that both source and transport of marine aerosols to
West Antarctica are controlled by remote atmospheric forcing, linking local dynamics
(e.g., katabatic winds) with large-scale teleconnections to the tropics (e.g., Rossby
waves). Oxygen isotope records allow me to further investigate the relationship between
West Antarctic firn-core records and temperature, precipitation origin, sea-ice variability,
and large-scale atmospheric circulation. I show that the tropical Pacific remotely
influences the source and transport of the isotopic signal to the coastal ice sheet. The
regional firn-core array reveals a spatially varying response to remote tropical Pacific
forcing. Finally, I investigate longer-term (~200 year) ocean and ice-sheet changes using
the methods and results gleaned from the previous work. I utilize sea-ice proxies to
reconstruct long-term changes in sea-ice and polynya variability in the Amundsen Sea,
and show that the tropics remotely influence West Antarctica over decadal timescales.
This thesis utilizes some of the highest-resolution, most coastal records in the region to
date, and provides some of the first analyses of the seasonal- to decadal-scale controls on
source and transport of marine aerosols to West Antarctica. | en_US | | |
dc.description.sponsorship | This research was supported by an award from the Department of Energy Office of
Science Graduate Fellowship Program (DOE SCGF) to ASC, a James E. and Barbara V.
Moltz Research Fellowship, and by grants from the National Science Foundation Office
of Polar Programs (NSF-OPP; #ANT-0632031 & #ANT-0631973), the National Science
Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Program (NSF-MRI; #EAR-1126217), the
NASA Cryosphere Program (#NNX10AP09G), and a WHOI Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Award for Innovative Research. | en_US | | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | | | |
dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US | | |
dc.publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | en_US | | |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | WHOI Theses | en_US | | |
dc.subject | Ocean-atmosphere interaction | | | |
dc.subject | Sea ice | | | |
dc.title | Amundsen Sea sea-ice variability, atmospheric circulation, and spatial variations in snow isotopic composition from new West Antarctic firn cores | en_US | | |
dc.type | Thesis | en_US | | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1575/1912/6402 | | | |