Description: Since the 1960-s the stable water isotope signal in ice core records has been used as a proxy for palaeotemperatures. However, this direct interpretation of the isotope signal has limitations, as the relationship between the isotope ratio and atmospheric temperature is known to fluctuate both spatially and temporally. One way to circumvent these limitations is the use of diffusion thermometry as pioneered by Johnsen et al (2000). In the firn stage the isotope signal is subject to a smoothing caused by the random movement of water vapour in the pores of the snow. The total amount of diffusion a layer has suffered is measured in terms of the diffusion length. This length is sensitive to changes in firn temperature and the accumulation rate at the site. The diffusion length for Oxygen-18 is higher than that for Deuterium due to a difference in ice-vapour fractionation factors. As these fractionation factors are dependent on the temperature of the firn, the difference in diffusion length can be used to estimate past local temperatures. To apply this differential diffusion method successfully, it is necessary to have high resolution measurements for both Oxygen-18 and Deuterium. We present such measurements for the EDML ice core. In total 400 m of ice was measured with a 5 cm resolution from periods in the mid and early Holocene, the last glacial-interglacial transition and the last glacial period. Application of the differential diffusion method to this dataset shows a decreasing temperature trend during the Holocene and a surface temperature of approximately -55 °C in the interval representing the LGM in the ice (~10 °C colder than present day temperature (not corrected for changes in altitude)). This is, within the error limits, in line with the temperature reconstructed from the stable water isotope proxy itself using the spatial isotope/temperature gradient (EPICA community members, 2006). References: Johnsen, S. et al, 2000. Diffusion of stable isotopes in polar firn and ice: the isotope effect in diffusion. In: Physics of Ice Core Records, Ed: Hondoh, T., p.121-140, Hokkaido Press, Sapporo. EPICA community members, 2006. One-to-one coupling of glacial climate variability in Greenland and Antarctica. Nature 444, p.195-198.

Description: Using high resolution chemical impurity and dielectric profiling data annual layers have been counted on the EPICA ice core from Dronning Maud Land (EDML), Antarctica spanning the past 16700 years. The methodology used for counting Greenland ice cores and creating the Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) [Rasmussen et al., 2006] has also been implemented for the EDML counting. The estimated maximum counting error for the EDML counting is approx. 5%, but a preliminary volcanic matching with Greenland ice core records suggest differences of 1% or less during the Holocene between the EDML counting and GICC05. A comparison of cosmogenic isotope records from EDML and Greenland also suggests differences of less than 1% between the two annual layer counted chronologies. Reference: Rasmussen, S.O., Andersen, K.K., Svensson, A., Steffensen, J.P., Vinther, B.M., Clausen, H.B., Andersen, M.L.S., Johnsen, S.J., Larsen, L.B., Dahl-Jensen, D., Bigler, M., Röthlisberger R., Fischer H., Goto-Azuma K., Hansson M.E., Ruth U, A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination, Journal of Geophysical Research Vol. 111, D06102, doi:10.1029/2005JD006079. 2006.

Description: Understanding the temporal variation of cosmic radiation and solar activity during the Holocene is essential for studies of the solar-terrestrial relationship. Cosmic-ray produced radionuclides, such as 10Be and 14C which are stored in polar ice cores and tree rings, offer the unique opportunity to reconstruct the history of cosmic radiation and solar activity over many millennia. Although records from different archives basically agree, they also show some deviations during certain periods. So far most reconstructions were based on only one single radionuclide record, which makes detection and correction of these deviations impossible. Here we combine different 10Be ice core records from Greenland and Antarctica with the global 14C tree ring record using principal component analysis. This approach is only possible due to a new high-resolution 10Be record from Dronning Maud Land obtained within the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica in Antarctica. The new cosmic radiation record enables us to derive total solar irradiance, which is then used as a proxy of solar activity to identify the solar imprint in an Asian climate record. Though generally the agreement between solar forcing and Asian climate is good, there are also periods without any coherence, pointing to other forcings like volcanoes and greenhouse gases and their corresponding feedbacks. The newly derived records have the potential to improve our understanding of the solar dynamics and to quantify the solar influence on climate.