Calibrated cryo-cell UV-LA-ICPMS elemental concentrations from the NGRIP ice core reveal abrupt, sub-annual variability in dust across the GI-21.2 interstadial period

Della Lunga, Damiano; Müller, Wolfgang; Rasmussen, Sune Olander; Svensson, Anders; Vallelonga, Paul

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1297-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1297-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1297-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 3

Research article

|

31 May 2017

Research article |

| 31 May 2017

Calibrated cryo-cell UV-LA-ICPMS elemental concentrations from the NGRIP ice core reveal abrupt, sub-annual variability in dust across the GI-21.2 interstadial period

Damiano Della Lunga, Wolfgang Müller, Sune Olander Rasmussen, Anders Svensson, and Paul Vallelonga

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Final revised paper (published on 31 May 2017)
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Preprint (discussion started on 23 Nov 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Della Lunga et al', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Dec 2016
- AC1: 'Authors reply to R1', Damiano Della Lunga, 02 Mar 2017
RC2: 'LA-ICP-MS', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 Feb 2017
- AC2: 'Authors reply to R2', Damiano Della Lunga, 02 Mar 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Damiano Della Lunga on behalf of the Authors (30 Mar 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Apr 2017) by Michiel van den Broeke

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (12 Apr 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have improved the paper and answered many of the points I raised in my original review. I am particularly pleased that they have added an interesting section showing the benefits of their technique for looking at microstructure (Figs 9 and 10). There are also improvements in the description of the method and in the interpretation of the data. While the paper is still quite light on application, it is now suitable for publication after moderate revision. There are still a few issues that need addressing, mainly typos, but at least one remaining science issue to be resolved:

Page 2, line 7 “from a quantitative”, needed to make the sentence make sense

Page 4 line 9 “matrix is a satisfactory”

Page 4, line 34 “shows all the regression”

Page 5, line 8-10. I don’t find Fig S3 very satisfactory because it is difficult to see how similar the two tracks are. It would be much better to plot the two tracks for each element together in 5 panels, 1 per element, if you want to illustrate this point. In fact I am not convinced the description “identical absolute values” is correct. Taking Ca as an example, at 12-15 cm, one track shows 10^4-10^5, while the other shows 10^5-10^7. I see large differences for Al at 0-1 cm too. Please give a more careful description of inter track variability.

Page 5, line 11 “resulting” not “resulted”.

Page 5. Please be really clear: you used two parallel tracks and averaged in this example. Was that done for all the plots shown or are they single tracks?

Page 6. I may have missed it but I don’t see a call to Fig 8 which actually seems unnecessary.

Page 7. ESSENTIAL EDIT: While the comparisons in Fig S4 are not too bad, they are few samples (and considerably off for 4882). But the comparison of Na in Fig 5 is very poor and cannot be rescued. As I said before, there are sections where LA-ICPMS and CFA give similar values and sections where they differ by a factor 5. This plot simply shows that there is a problem for Na, something you already admitted. It should either be removed, or used to confirm that LAICPMS cannot be used yet for Na. It cannot be used at all to bolster any argument that the two techniques agree.

Page 9, lines 18-24. This can really not be the reason for a factor 5 offset of LA-ICPMS Na. The issues you raise would lead to short range variability about an identical mean value. For Na you have a completely different mean in places. Please edit.

Page 9, line 27. “concentrations of impurities is” (remove “it”).

Page 10, line 3. So did you use two tracks in this study? It’s really not clear, and seems unlikely as this would have smoothed some of the variability.

Fig 1 still has a problem as the box should run to 2691.5 m but actually goes to 2691.1 m.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (16 Apr 2017) by Michiel van den Broeke

AR by Damiano Della Lunga on behalf of the Authors (20 Apr 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (21 Apr 2017) by Michiel van den Broeke

AR by Damiano Della Lunga on behalf of the Authors (21 Apr 2017) Manuscript

Short summary

In our study we combined the wealth of information provided by Greenland ice cores with an ultra-high-resolution technique well known in geoscience (laser ablation). Our set-up was developed and applied to investigate the variability in concentration of ions across a rapid climatic change from the oldest part of the last glaciation, showing that concentrations drop abruptly from cold to warm periods, representing a shift in atmospheric transport that happens even faster than previously thought.