Journal
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
Volume 52, Issue 8, Pages 6575-6586Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2016WR019436
Keywords
stable isotopes; Alaska; isotope climatology; isoscape; temperature effect
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Funding
- National Science Foundation
- Arctic Program [ARC-0714060, ARC-0714058]
- NSF MRI grant [EAR-0521196]
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Spatially extensive Arctic stable isotope data are sparse, inhibiting the climatic understanding required to interpret paleoclimate proxy records. To fill this need, we constrained the climatic and physiographic controls on O-18 and D values of stream waters across Alaska and the Yukon to derive interpolated isoscape maps. O-18 is strongly correlated to winter temperature parameters and similarity of the surface water line (H-2=8.0 x O-18+6.4) to the Global Meteoric Water Line suggests stream waters are a proxy for meteoric precipitation. We observe extreme orographic O-18 decreases and a trans-Alaskan continental gradient of -8.3 1000 km(-1). Continental gradients are high in coastal zones and low in the interior. Localized O-18 increases indicate inland air mass penetration via topographic lows. Using observed O-18/temperature gradients, we show that O-18 decreases in a approximate to 24 ka permafrost ice wedge relative to the late Holocene indicate mean annual and coldest quarter temperature reductions of 8.91.7 degrees C and 17.23.2 degrees C, respectively.
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