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Central Tibetan Plateau atmospheric trace metal contamination: A 500-year record from the Puruogangri ice core

June 20, 2017

Central Tibetan Plateau atmospheric trace metal contamination: A 500-year record from the Puruogangri ice core

Map of the region with an image of an ice core and graph of the project data

Byrd Center Paleoclimatology Research Group members Emilie Beaudon, Paolo Gabrielli, Roxana Sierra-Hernández, and Lonnie Thompson recently published a record of atmospheric trace metal contamination in the Central Tibetan Plateau in Science of The Total Environment.

The Puruogangri Ice Cap lies in the center of the Tibetan Plateau (Western Tanggula Mountain Range) at the northern border of the Asian Monsoon influence area. The ice core collected from Puruogangri in 2000 contains an extended reconstruction of Central Tibetan Plateau atmospheric pollution. The study presents a 500-year atmospheric contamination history, which is the oldest record of heavy metal concentration for that region. The project team found that the anthropogenic pollution signal in antimony (Sb) and cadmium (Cd) emerges around 1935 and is the product of hemisphere-wide coal-powered human activities. The pollution in Cd and lead (Pb) reaching the Puruogangri ice cap peaked in 1965, contemporaneous to the Great Leap Forward industrial period in China and to climax of metallurgical production in the former Soviet Union.

The beginning of a new increase after 1985, synchronous with East and South Asia emission trends, indicates that Puruogangri records the new era of atmospheric heavy metal pollution linked to the economic emergence of China and India as well as other regions bordering the Tibetan Plateau to the east and south. In this latter case, the summer monsoon circulation would be expected to have marginalized the winter westerlies and become the main conveyor of atmospheric Sb, Cd, Pb, zinc (Zn) and silver (Ag) to Central Tibet.

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