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Fig. 18.3 Dust concentrations in EPICA Dome C and Vostok Antarctic ice cores. Also shown are
reconstructed temperatures for EDC, relative to the average of the past 1,000 years
observed during the coldest parts of the glacial maxima - about 150, 60 and 20 ka
ago. Petit et al. ( 1990 ) confirmed these findings and compared them to magnetic
records from a Southern Ocean marine sediment record, revealing common dust
fluxes to the Antarctic continent and Southern Ocean. The Vostok record was
ultimately extended to an age of 420 ka at 3,623 m depth (Petit et al. 1999 ). It
was found that dust peaks had occurred at each of the last four glacial maxima, and
were all of approximately equal magnitude (Fig. 18.3 ).
A new drilling at Dome C under the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica
(EPICA) covered 8 glacial cycles (780 ka) and is the longest ice core record
currently available from Antarctica (Fig. 18.3 ). Dust fluxes were greater during
the last 4 glacial maxima compared to the previous 4 maxima, corresponding to
the Mid-Brunhes Event (MBE), a climate transition from cooler interstadials to
warmer interstadials about 430 ka ago. Dust fluxes were observed to decrease by
approximately 25 times from full glacial to interglacial conditions, with fluxes
during glacial maxima regularly being greater than 12 mg/m 2 /y. A strong correlation
between dust fluxes and paleotemperatures was observed for the coldest climate
periods, with much lower correlations (>0.2) during warmer climate periods. This
was interpreted as a strengthening in the deflation of dust in southern South America
and more efficient transport to deposition sites in Antarctica. The full EPICA Dome
C dust record was published in 2008 (Lambert et al. 2008 ), with earlier evaluations
of the last 27 ka (Delmonte et al. 2002a ) and 220 ka (Delmonte et al. 2004a ).
 
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