Photolytic modification of seasonal nitrate isotope cycles in East Antarctica

Akers, Pete D.; Savarino, Joël; Caillon, Nicolas; Magand, Olivier; Le Meur, Emmanuel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15637-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15637-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15637-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 24

Research article

|

14 Dec 2022

Research article |

| 14 Dec 2022

Photolytic modification of seasonal nitrate isotope cycles in East Antarctica

Pete D. Akers, Joël Savarino, Nicolas Caillon, Olivier Magand, and Emmanuel Le Meur

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-15637-2022-supplement

Data sets

Nitrate isotopic data from snow collected along the CHICTABA traverse, East Antarctica, 2013-2014 Pete D. Akers, Joël Savarino, Nicolas Caillon, Olivier Magand, and Emmanuel Le Meur https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.948355

Model code and software

CHICTABA transect, Antarctica, snow nitrate analysis Pete D. Akers https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7287413

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Short summary

Nitrate isotopes in Antarctic ice do not preserve the seasonal isotopic cycles of the atmosphere, which limits their use to study the past. We studied nitrate along an 850 km Antarctic transect to learn how these cycles are changed by sunlight-driven chemistry in the snow. Our findings suggest that the snow accumulation rate and other environmental signals can be extracted from nitrate with the right sampling and analytical approaches.