‘Reconstructing the Earth’s climate by means of cosmogenic radionuclides in polar ice cores’
Johannes Fritsche

Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science & Technology

The ice sheets of Greenland & Antarctica constitiute a natural archive of the Earth’s climate history. Over time constituents of the atmosphere have been precipitated with snow and trapped as the snow turns to ice. Produced in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays and transported to the Earth’s surface, cosmogenic radionuclides provide valuable information about the variability of the Sun, fluctuations of geomagnetic field strength and changes in the global carbon cycle.
By analysing cosmogenic radionuclides in polar ice cores solar variability can be reconstructed for the past 100,000 years. In his presentation, Johannes Fritsche will present an overview of research at EAWAG which aims to understand the variability of the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field, fluctuations in the global carbon cycle and changes in ocean circulation.