U-034 - Mount Hunter Ice Core
PI: Dr. Erich Osterberg
Project Lead: Erich Osterberg
Funding Source: NSF/AGS 1204035
Location: Mount Hunter, Denali Range, Alaska
Dates: 2014-07-31 to 2014-07-31
Project Summary
This project aims to extract and analyze a series of ice cores from a plateau situated on a 1km x 1km ice divide on Mount Hunter, Alaska. The ice cores will 1) produce the first high-resolution record of central Alaskan snow accumulation spanning the past 1000 years, 2) evaluate to what extent the suite of North Pacific ice core accumulation records are representative of regional precipitation and atmospheric circulation patterns over the instrumnetal period using climate reanalysis datasets and mesoscale atmospheric model results, 3) compare model-based and proxy-based reconstructions of North Pacific climate during the LIA and MCA. GPS equipment was used for ice surface elevation and velocity measurements in 2013, and TLS was used in 2014 to create a baseline high resolution DEM of the study location for use in complex 3D finite element numerical stratigraphic modeling and for comparison to in situ surface elevation monitoring throughout the 3 year project.