Surface water mass composition changes captured by cores of Arctic land-fast sea ice

Continental Shelf Research (2016)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csr.2016.02.008

This paper examines a method to reconstruct changes in water masses using oxygen isotope measurements of sea ice cores.

To determine changes in sea water isotope composition over the course of the ice growth period, we used the output of a sea ice thermodynamic model, sea ice oxygen isotope measurements and an isotopic fractionation model.

It is shown that for sea ice formed during the 2011/2012 ice growth season at Barrow, Alaska, large changes in isotopic composition of the ocean waters were captured by the sea ice isotopic composition.