Low volume capillary ion chromatography ice core measurements from Aurora Basin North, 2013-2014

Development of a new method to measure trace ions in ice cores using low volume capillary ion chromatography.From the project description:The high costs associated with collection of ice-cores from Antarctica demand scientists extract the absolute maximum data from these precious commodities. Traditional analytical techniques are neither optimised or indeed able to meet the demands of delivering high value multi-species data from sub-mL sample volumes, to provide higher temporal resolution in subsequent paleoclimatic records. To extract the most information from analytical data derived from these valuable ice cores, and/or low accumulation sites, the amount of sample required for each analysis must be drastically reduced by between 10 and 100 fold. Capillary ion chromatography (cap-IC) presents a new analytical capability to provide quantification of inorganic and organic ions based upon such sample volumes, and improve temporal resolution in ice-core records by 10-20 times. This new technology, using methods developed in a recent pilot study, will be applied to existing ice cores from Law Dome and other Antarctic sites.