Sublimation Origin of Negative Deuterium Excess Observed in Snow and Ice Samples From McMurdo Dry Valleys and Allan Hills Blue Ice Areas, East Antarctica

The oxygen and hydrogen isotopic composition in snow and ice have long been utilized to reconstruct past temperatures of polar regions, under the assumption that post-depositional processes such as sublimation do not fractionate snow. In low-accumulation (<0.01 m yr(-1)) areas near the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, surface snow and ice samples have exceptionally low deuterium excess values (d-excess equivalent to delta D - 8*delta O-18)-sometimes as negative as -5 parts per thousand-an uncommon phenomenon that is not fully understood. Here we use both an isotope-enabled general circulation model and an ice physics model and establish that such exceptionally low d-excess values can only arise from precipitation if the majority of the moisture is sourced from the Southern Ocean (south of 55 degrees S). However, the model results show that moisture sourced from oceans north of 55 degrees S contributes significantly (>50%) to precipitation in Antarctica today. We thus propose that sublimation must have occurred to yield the low d-excess values in snow observed in and near the Dry Valleys, and that solid-phase-diffusion in ice grains is sufficiently fast to allow Rayleigh-like isotopic fractionation in similar environments. We calculate that under present-day conditions at the Allan Hills outside the Dry Valleys, 3%-24% of the surface snow is lost due to sublimation. Because the magnitude of sublimation may be nonstationary (i.e., it could vary in time) during past cold periods, we suggest that sublimation-induced fractionation can alter the relationship between the snow isotopic composition and polar temperatures.

Automated summary

This article investigates the phenomenon of low d-excess values in precipitation in Antarctica and suggests that it is caused by moisture sourced from the Southern Ocean and sublimation. The authors propose that this fractionation phenomenon may alter the relationship between snow isotopic composition and polar temperatures.