Francois Burgay

Paul Scherrer Institut | PSI · Laboratory of Radiochemistry and Environmental Chemistry

Volcanic eruptions are widely used in ice core science to date or synchronize ice cores. Volcanoes emit large amounts of SO2 that is subsequently converted in the atmosphere into sulfuric acid/ sulphate. Its discrete and continuous quantification is currently used to determine the ice layers impacted by volcanic emissions, but available high-resolu...

The chemical fractionation of ten metals (Al, Ti, Cr, Fe, Cd, Cu, Mn, Pb, Zn and Ni) is reported for a marine sediment collected in the Joides Basin, Ross Sea, Antarctica. To evaluate their mobility and availability, the BCR sequential extraction procedure was applied on 11 sections of the sediment. The analyses, performed both by ICP-OES and GF-AA...

Iron (Fe) is a key element in the Earth climate system, as it can enhance marine primary productivity in the high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) regions where, despite a high concentration of major nutrients, chlorophyll production is low due to iron limitation. Eolian mineral dust represents one of the main Fe sources to the oceans; thus, quantif...

Polar stratospheric ozone has decreased since the 1970s due to anthropogenic emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and halons, resulting in the formation of an ozone hole over Antarctica. The effects of the ozone hole and the associated increase in incoming UV radiation on terrestrial and marine ecosystems are well established; however, the impact on ge...

Wildfires can influence the earth's radiative forcing through the emission of biomass-burning aerosols. To better constrain the impacts of wildfires on climate and understand their evolution under future climate scenarios, reconstructing their chemical nature, assessing their past variability, and evaluating their influence on the atmospheric compo...

The Svalbard archipelago is particularly sensitive to climate change due to the relatively low altitude of its main ice fields and its geographical location in the higher North Atlantic, where the effect of the Arctic Amplification is more significant. The largest temperature increases have been observed during winter, but increasing summer tempera...

Here we present the high-resolution CFA data from the top 479 m of the East Greenland Ice coring Project (EGRIP) ice core covering the past 3.8 thousand years. The data consists of 1 mm-depth-resolution profiles of calcium, sodium, am- monium, nitrate and electrolytic conductivity as well as decadal averages of these profiles. Alongside the data we...

Insoluble particles in ice cores record signatures of past climate parameters like vegetation dynamics, volcanic activity, and aridity. For some of them, the analytical detection relies on intensive bench microscopy investigation and requires dedicated sample preparation steps. Both are laborious, require in-depth knowledge, and often restrict samp...

Bromine enrichment (Brenr) has been proposed as an ice core proxy for past sea-ice reconstruction. Understanding the processes that influence bromine preservation in the ice is crucial to achieve a reliable interpretation of ice core signals and to potentially relate them to past sea-ice variability. Here, we present a 210 years bromine record that...

Sea ice decline in the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas has been proposed to contribute to the repeated abrupt atmospheric warmings recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial period, known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events. However, the understanding of how sea ice changes were coupled with abrupt climate changes during D-O events has r...

Insoluble particles in ice cores record signatures of past climate parameters like vegetation, volcanic activity or aridity. Their analytical detection depends on intensive bench microscopy investigation and requires dedicated sample preparation steps. Both are laborious, require in-depth knowledge and often restrict sampling strategies. To help ov...

Ice core dating is the first step for a correct interpretation of climatic and environmental changes. In this work, we release the dating of the uppermost 197 m of the 250 m deep GV7(B) ice core (drill site, 70∘41′ S, 158∘52′ E; 1950 m a.s.l. in Oates Land, East Antarctica) with a sub-annual resolution. Chemical records of NO3-, MSA (methanesulfoni...

Ice core dating is the first step for a correct interpretation of climatic and environmental changes. In this work, we release a stratigraphic dating of the uppermost 197 m of the 250 m deep GV7(B) ice core (drilling site, 70°41’S, 158°52’E, 1950 m a.s.l.) with a sub-annual resolution. Chemical stratigraphies of NO3−, MSA (methanesulfonic acid), no...

Organic acids in aerosols Earth's atmosphere are ubiquitous and they have been extensively studied across urban, rural and polar environments. However, little is known about their properties, transport, source and seasonal variations in the Svalbard Archipelago. Here, we present the annual trend of organic acids in the aerosol collected at Ny-Ålesu...

Fe(II) is more soluble and bioavailable than Fe(III) species, therefore the investigation of their relativeabundance and redox processes is relevant to better assess the supply of bioavailable iron to the oceanand its impact on marine productivity. In this context, we present a discrete chemiluminescence-basedmethod for the determination of Fe(II)...

Iron is a key element in the Earth climate system as it can enhance the marine primary productivity in the High-Nutrient Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions where, despite a high concentration of major nutrients, the chlorophyll production is low due to iron limitation. One of the main Fe sources to the ocean is Aeolian dust. For this reason, ice cores...

Polar regions are fragile ecosystems threatened by both long-range pollution and local human contamination. In this context, the environmental distribution of the Personal Care Products (PCPs) represent a major knowledge gap. Following preliminary Antarctic studies, Fragrance Materials (FMs) were analyzed in the seawater and snow collected in the a...