Giovanni Baccolo

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Verified

Giovanni verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Assistant Professor at Roma Tre University

Small Alpine glaciers located below the regional equilibrium line altitude are experiencing considerable ice loss and are expected to fragment into smaller glacial bodies and eventually disappear. Monitoring such glaciers by satellite remote sensing is often challenging because their size and surrounding topography are incompatible with the current...

High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors are powerful detectors for gamma-ray spectroscopy. The sensitivity to low-intensity gamma-ray peaks is often hindered by the presence of Compton continuum distributions, originated by gamma-rays emitted at higher energies. This study explores novel, pulse shape-based, machine learning-assisted techniques to en...

The dark sediment on the surface of glaciers, called cryoconite, plays an important role in accumulating various contaminants during glacier melting. One of the high-risk is anthropogenic fallout radioisotopes, which have been accumulating since 1945. The melting of alpine glaciers is accelerating, rapidly releasing stored pollutants, and becoming...

The Adamello Glacier is the largest and the thickest glacier in the Italian Alps, with a maximum ice thickness of 270 m. Here we provide an overview of its evolution since the Little Ice Age and of the results obtained from the ice core drilling activities carried out on this glacier. A review of the existing cartography from the 19 th century onwa...

Under climatic warming, glaciers are becoming a secondary source of atmospheric contaminants originally released into the environment decades ago. This phenomenon has been well-documented for glaciers near emission sources. However, less is known about polar ice sheets and ice caps. Radionuclides are one of the contaminants that can be remobilised...

In the framework of physics experiments searching for rare events, the selection of extremely radiopure materials is a challenging task, as the signal of interest is often hidden by instrumental background. Neutron activation is a powerful technique to measure trace contaminants with high sensitivity but, to be properly applied, it requires a good...

This study concerns the 235U/238U ratios in environmental samples collected in the Pamir region (Central Asia). Cryoconite (a supra-glacial sediment), soil and river water were sampled in the Muztagh Ata Glacier Basin, a secondary basin belonging to Gaizi River watershed. The aim of the research is to assess the impact of anthropic nuclear activiti...

High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detectors are powerful detectors for gamma-ray spectroscopy. The sensitivity to low-intensity gamma-ray peaks is often hindered by the presence of Compton continuum distributions, originated by gamma-rays emitted at higher energies. This study explores novel, pulse shape-based, machine learning-assisted techniques to en...

In the framework of physics experiments searching for rare events, the selection of extremely radiopure materials is a challenging task, as the signal of interest is often hidden by instrumental background. Neutron activation is a powerful technique to measure trace contaminants with high sensitivity but, to be properly applied, it requires a good...

The pattern of atmospheric and climate changes recorded by coastal Antarctic ice core sites, and the processes they illustrate, highlight the importance of multiproxy studies on ice cores drilled from such peripheral areas, where regional to local-scale processes can be documented. Here, we present a 2000 year long record of aeolian mineral dust an...

The article discusses the use of tritium (3H) and cesium (137Cs) as temporal markers in ice cores extracted from temperate glaciers. We present a complete tritium profile for a 46 m ice core drilled from the Adamello Glacier, a temperate glacier in the Italian Alps, and compare it to the 137Cs profile from the same ice core. Our analysis reveals tr...

Small Alpine glaciers located below the regional equilibrium line altitude are experiencing considerable ice losses and are expected to fragment into smaller glacial bodies and eventually disappear. Monitoring such glaciers through remote sensing is often challenging because of the incompatibility between their size and the spatial resolution of sa...

In recent years, cryoconite – a mineral-organic debris that accumulates on the glacier surface - has been the subject of interest due to its ability to accumulate specific substances, surpassing levels found in other terrestrial ecosystems (e.g., proglacial, sediments, soil, lichens, mosses). This phenomenon is attributed to a combination of natura...

The integration of the knowledge on the biological and pollutant aerosols on snow and ice is an important step towards building a holistic scheme of the atmosphere-biosphere-cryosphere interaction. The organisms on glaciers can interact with organic pollutants through decomposition and acquire resistance to heavy metals or antibiotics. However, the...

The analysis of uranium isotope ratio 235U/238U in environmental media serves as a reliable method to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic sources of uranium, playing a crucial role in assessing the extent of contamination with anthropogenic uranium and disturbances in its biogeochemical cycle. In this study, we focus on the northeastern T...

Asian dust has significant impacts on atmospheric systems and global biogeochemical cycles. In this study, we applied the U isotopic method to trace sediments based on their comminuting age, analyzing the uranium isotopes of cryoconite samples from various glaciers in western China, including the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and Tianshan Mountains. We aime...

The article discusses the use of 3H and 137Cs as temporal markers in ice cores extracted from temperate glaciers. We present a complete tritium (3H) profile for a 46 m ice core drilled from Adamello glacier, a temperate glacier in the Italian Alps, and compare it to 137Cs profile from the same ice core. Our analysis reveals contamination of tritium...

Il report a cura del Servizio Glaciologico Lombardo - SGL presenta i dati rilevati sul campo e l'interpretazione sulla base delle medie storiche degli ultimi decenni. Le nevicate tardo primaverili limitano parzialmente i danni di un'altra stagione di accumulo avara di precipitazioni sui ghiacciai lombardi. I valori di altezza neve e contenuto in ac...

The accumulation of fallout radionuclides (FRNs) from nuclear weapons testing and nuclear accidents has been evaluated for over half a century in natural environments; however, until recently their distribution and abundance within glaciers have been poorly understood. Following a series of individual studies of FRNs, specifically 137Cs, 241Am and...

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) are significant components of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and pose a threat to both ecosystems and human health. To explore their spatial distribution, origins, and risk assessment, we collected 25 glacial meltwater and downstream river water samples in the easter...

Mountain glaciers are crucial sources of fresh water, contributing directly and indirectly to water, energy and food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Assessing the impact of diminishing glacial meltwater contributions to the security of this resource is critical as we seek to manage and adapt to changing freshwater dynamics in a warming...

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...

Atom ratio between ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U is often used as an indicator of U contamination as the isotopic signature of products generated by the nuclear and military industry significantly vary from the natural isotopic ratio of U. In this study, surface soils and glaciers samples were collected in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) and its surrounding areas and ana...

Soil mobilization has been investigated by means of fallout radionuclides (FRN) in a first‐order catchment of the Eastern Alps. Caesium‐137, 210Pbxs. (210Pb excess or unsupported fraction), 241Am have been measured in soil samples collected from a pasture at about 2150 m a.s.l.. Combining pedologic and radioactivity data, including mineral‐related...

The Impacts of Atmospheric and Environmental Changes of Urban Cities and Suburbs on The Tibetan Plateau and other northern Hemispheric Cryosphere Due to the ability to spread in the atmosphere, air pollution is considered a global and alarming phenomenon and has a significant impact on global climate, environment and human health. The Tibetan Plate...

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...

Cryoconite is a mixture of mineral and organic material covering glacial ice, playing important roles in biogeochemical cycles and lowering the albedo of a glacier surface. Understanding the differences in structure of cryoconite across the globe can be important in recognizing past and future changes in supraglacial environments and ice-organisms-...

This study is a first survey of the occurrence of artificial (137Cs, 241Am, 207Bi, Pu isotopes) and natural (210Pb, 228Ac, 214Bi, 40K) radionuclides in Norwegian cryoconite. Cryoconite samples were collected before (12 samples) and after (5 samples) a rainfall event, after which 7 cryoconite holes dissapeared. The concentrations of radionuclides in...

Sulle tracce dei piccoli ghiacciai. La valorizzazione del fondo fotografico «Bruno Castiglioni» per lo studio del cambiamento climatico Viene qui presentato il percorso di valorizzazione dell'archivio fotografico di Bruno Castiglioni, glaciologo e geografo attivo nel periodo tra le due guerre. Il fondo Bruno Castiglioni è tra le più cospicue e inte...

The release of legacy contaminants such as fallout radionuclides (FRNs) in response to glacier retreat is a process that has received relatively little attention to date, yet may have consequences as a source of secondary contamination as glaciers melt and down-waste in response to a warming climate. The presence of FRNs in glacier-fed catchments i...

In the framework of rare event searches, the identification of radioactive contaminants in ultra-pure samples is a challenging task, because the signal is often at the same level of the instrumental background. This is a rather common situation for $$\alpha $$ α -spectrometers and other detectors used for low-activity measurements. In order to obta...

Worldwide, snow and ice can be polluted with impurities also referred as Light-Absorbing Particles (LAPs). In this chapter, we review the different processes occurring at middle latitudes, tropical areas, and polar regions. We show that snow and ice albedo reduction due to LAPs deposition or resurfacing is a global phenomenon with regional characte...

Thanks to its insolubility, mineral dust is considered a stable proxy in polar ice cores. With this study we show that the Talos Dome ice core (TALDICE, Ross Sea sector of East Antarctica) displays evident and progressive signs of post-depositional processes affecting the mineral dust record below 1000 m deep. We apply a suite of established and cu...

Thanks to its insolubility, mineral dust is considered a stable proxy in polar ice cores. With this study we show that below an ice-depth of 1000 m, the Talos Dome ice core (Ross Sea sector of East Antarctica) presents evident and progressive signs of post-depositional processes affecting the mineral dust records. We applied a suite of established...

The release of legacy fallout radionuclides (FRNs) in response to glacier retreat is a process that has received relatively little attention to date, yet may have important consequences as a source of secondary contamination as glaciers melt and down-waste in response to a warming climate. The prevalence of FRNs in glacier-fed catchments is poorly...

In the framework of rare event searches, the identification of radioactive contaminants in ultra-pure samples is a challenging task, because the signal is often at the same level of the instrumental background. This is a rather common situation for $\alpha$-spectrometers and other detectors used for low-activity measurements. In order to obtain the...

A deeper understanding of past atmospheric circulation variability in the Central Andes is a high-priority topic in paleoclimatology mainly because of the necessity to validate climate models used to predict future precipitation trends and to develop mitigation and/or adaptation strategies for future climate change scenarios in this region. Within...

Developing detectors operating in time coincidence is a possible way to increase the sensitivity in gamma spectroscopy. Such design allows both the selection of specific events and the rejection of background. In this work we present a new low background detector mainly developed for the determination of radioactive contamination of liquid samples....

Fino a pochi decenni fa sette piccoli ghiacciai si nascondevano tra le pieghe rocciose delle Pale di San Martino, nelle Dolomiti. Oggi di essi rimane ben poco: alcuni sono ormai estinti, altri sono ridotti a placche di ghiaccio sporco e immobile. I ghiacciai stanno abbandonando la montagna dolomitica: presto nei remoti valloni un tempo occupati dal...

Many interpretations have been proposed to explain the presence of jarosite within Martian surficial sediments, including the possibility that it precipitated within paleo-ice deposits owing to englacial weathering of dust. However, until now a similar geochemical process was not observed on Earth nor in other planetary settings. We report a multi-...

Understanding the mechanisms controlling glacial retreat in the tropical Andes can strengthen future predictions of ice cover in the region. As glaciers are a dominant freshwater source in these regions, accurate ice cover predictions are necessary for developing effective strategies to protect future water resources. In this study, we investigated...

Dear Colleagues, In light of the Alpine Glaciology Meeting, originally expected to be held in Milan on 27-28 February and postponed to a later date, and dedicated to advances in the study of the cryosphere, encompassing glaciers, ice caps, snow, permafrost, and glacial geomorphology, we hope to provide an updated picture of new discoveries in cryos...

The worldwide distribution of microinvertebrates on glaciers, the coldest biome, is poorly known. Owing to their tolerance to hostile conditions, small size and dispersal abilities, nematodes, tardigrades and rotifers are considered cosmopolitan and together inhabit various ecosystems. In this study, we investigated their global distribution in cry...

Cryoconite, a sediment found on the surface of glaciers, is known for its ability to accumulate radionuclides. New data on cryoconite from the Morteratsch glacier (Switzerland) are presented to shed light on the mechanisms that control the distribution of radioactivity in cryoconite. Among the radionuclides detected in our samples, we have identifi...

Many interpretations have been proposed to explain the presence of jarosite within Martian surficial sediments, including the possibility that it precipitated within paleo-ice deposits owing to englacial weathering of dust. But until now a similar mechanism was not observed on Earth nor in other planetary settings. We report the first multi-analyti...

Bruno Castiglioni (Milano, 1898 – Pavia, 1945) was an important Italian geographer in the period between the first and second world wars. He worked on several themes, ranging from geology, to geomorphology and anthropology, but his main interest during early career was Dolomitic glaciology. At the beginning of his scientific activity he considered...

Abstract. A deeper understanding of past atmospheric circulation variability in the Central Andes is a high-priority topic in paleoclimatology, mainly because of the necessity to validate climate models used to predict future precipitation trends and to develop mitigation and/or adaptation strategies for future climate change scenarios in this regi...

The melting of glaciers and ice sheets is nowadays considered a symbol of climate change. Many complex mechanisms are involved in the melting of ice, and, among these processes, surface darkening due to organic material on bare ice has recently received attention from the scientific community. The presence of microbes on glaciers has been shown to...

Cryoconite is rich in natural and artificial radioactivity, but a discussion about its ability to accumulate radionuclides is lacking. A characterization of cryoconite from two Alpine glaciers is presented here. Results confirm that cryoconite is significantly more radioactive than the matrices usually adopted for the environmental monitoring of ra...

Cryoconite, a sediment found on the surface of glaciers, is known for its ability to accumulate radionuclides. New data on cryoconite from the Morteratsch glacier (Switzerland) are presented with the aim to shed light on the mechanisms that control the distribution of radioactivity in cryoconite. Among the many radionuclides detected in our samples...

Accurate estimates of the past extent of the Greenland ice sheet provide critical constraints for ice sheet models used to determine Greenland’s response to climate forcing and contribution to global sea level. Here we use a continuous ice core dust record from the Renland ice cap on the east coast of Greenland to constrain the timing of changes to...

Mineral grain micromorphology is a useful proxy for reconstructing the history of mineral matter deposited on glaciers. In this study, we focus on the grain shape and micromorphology of mineral particles collected from cryoconite holes on glaciers in the Alps, the Caucasus and Svalbard. We use the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to better unders...

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-knowledge of dust flux and variability in time and space in different sectors of East Antarctica during the Holocene. By integrating the literature data with new evidences, we discuss the dust flux and grain-size variability during the current interglacial and its provenance in the...

An alpine ice core, extracted from the Adamello glacier (Central Italian Alps), was analyzed in its entire length through low background γ-spectroscopy, for the detection of 137 Cs. Our results show that in glacier ice 137 Cs is tightly bound to insoluble particulate matter inside the ice core, and it is therefore possible to restrict γ-spec-trosco...

Cryoconite is extremely rich in natural and artificial radionuclides, but a comprehensive discussion about its ability to accumulate radioactivity is lacking. A characterization of cryoconite from two Alpine glaciers is presented and discussed. Results confirm that cryoconite is among the most radioactive environmental matrices, with activity conce...

Airborne dust extracted from deep ice core perforations can provide chemical and mineralogical insight into the history of the climate and atmospheric conditions, with unrivalled temporal resolution, time span and richness of information. The availability of material for research and the natural complexity of the particulate, however, pose signific...

Between the end of September and the beginning of October 2017, low but detectable air concentrations of Ruthenium-106 (106Ru) were measured throughout the European atmosphere. To date, the source has not been clearly identified. This study aims at constraining the location of most likely emission source, by combining HYSPLIT back trajectories and...

Cryoconite is the dark, granular sediment, that is globally found on the ablation surface of mountain glaciers and ice sheets. It gained attention from many branches of Earth Sciences, Microbiology and Geochemistry. Cryoconite sediments are composed by a mineral fraction, whose origin can be local or remote and that accounts for 80-98% of total mas...

The input of mineral dust from arid regions impacts snow optical properties. The induced albedo reduction generally alters the melting dynamics of the snowpack, resulting in earlier snowmelt. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of dust depositions on the melting dynamics of snowpack at a high-elevation site (2160 m) in the European Alps (Torgnon,...

Changes in the composition of dust trapped in ice provide evidence of past atmospheric circulation and earth surface conditions. Investigations of dust provenance in Antarctic ice during glacial and interglacial periods indicate that South America is the primary dust source during both climate regimes. Here, we present results from a new ice core d...

The aim of the FAMU (Fisica degli Atomi Muonici) experiment is to realize the first measurement of the hyperfine splitting (hfs) in the 1S state of muonic hydrogen Δ Ehfs1S, by using the RIKEN-RAL intense pulsed muon beam and a high-energy mid-infrared tunable laser. This requires a detailed study of the muon transfer mechanism at different tempera...

Iron is thought to limit the biomass of phytoplankton populations in extensive regions of the ocean, which are referred to as high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) regions. Iron speciation in soils is still poorly understood. We have investigated inorganic and organic standard substances, diluted mixtures of common Fe minerals in insoluble dust in s...

X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) measurements at the Fe K-edge were performed on aeolian dust in the TALos Dome Ice CorE drilling project (TALDICE) ice core drilled in the peripheral East Antarctic plateau, as well as on Southern Hemisphere potential source area samples. While South American sources show, as expected, a progressive incr...

The input of mineral dust from arid regions impacts snow optical properties. The induced albedo reduction generally alters the melting dynamics of the snowpack, resulting in earlier snowmelt. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of dust depositions on the melting dynamics of snowpack in a high-altitude site (2160m) in the European Alps (Torgnon, A...

The main goal of the FAMU experiment is the measurement of the hyperfine splitting (hfs) in the 1S state of muonic hydrogen ΔEhfs (μ ⁻p)1S. The physical process behind this experiment is the following: μp are formed in a mixture of hydrogen and a higher-Z gas. When absorbing a photon at resonance-energy ΔEhfs ≈ 0.182 eV, in subsequent collisions wi...

Ice cores from inner East Antarctica provided some of the longest and most detailed climatic reconstructions and allowed understanding the relationships between atmospheric mineral dust and climate. In this work we present synchrotron radiation X-ray Fluorescence geochemical data of dust from the TALDICE ice core drilled at Talos Dome, a peripheral...

The possibility of finding a stratigraphically intact ice sequence with a potential basal age exceeding one million years in Antarctica is giving renewed interest to deep ice coring operations. But the older and deeper the ice, the more impactful are the post-depositional processes that alter and modify the information entrapped within ice layers....

The main goal of the FAMU experiment is the measurement of the hyperfine splitting (hfs) in the 1S state of muonic hydrogen $\Delta E_{hfs}(\mu^-p)1S$. The physical process behind this experiment is the following: $\mu p$ are formed in a mixture of hydrogen and a higher-Z gas. When absorbing a photon at resonance-energy $\Delta E_{hfs}\approx0.182$...

The analysis of particulate matter (PM) in dilute solutions is an important target for environmental, geochemical, and biochemical research. Here, we show how microdrop technology may allow the control, through the evaporation of small droplets, of the deposition of insoluble materials dispersed in a solution on a well-defined area with a specific...

The analysis of particulate matter (PM) in dilute solutions is an important target for environmental, geochemical and biochemical researches. Here we show how the microdrop technology may allow to control, through the evaporation of small droplets, the deposition of insoluble materials dispersed in a solution on a well-defined area with a specific...

The Klotz Abakus laser sensor and the Coulter counter are both used for measuring the size distribution of insoluble mineral dust particles in ice cores. While the Coulter counter measures particle volume accurately, the equivalent Abakus instrument measurement deviates substantially from the Coulter counter. We show that the difference between the...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

Glacier retreat is one of the most impressive consequences of current climate change. A deep understanding of the complex dynamics which modulate and govern ice melting and glacier retreat, is still lacking. One of the less investigated points concern the relationship between biotic and abiotic processes occurring on the surface of glaciers and the...

Glacial retreat is a major problem in the Alps, especially over the past 40 years. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide an unparalleled opportunity to track the spatiotemporal variations in rapidly changing glacial morphological features related to glacial dynamics. The objective of this study is to evaluate the potential of commercial UAV p...

High-resolution, well-dated climate archives provide an opportunity to investigate the dynamic interactions of climate patterns relevant for future projections. Here, we present data from a new, annually dated ice core record from the eastern Ross Sea, named the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) ice core. Comparison of this record with clim...

Cryoconite, the typical sediment found on the surface of glaciers, is mainly known in relation to its role in glacial microbiology and in altering the glacier albedo. But if these aspects are relatively well addressed, the same cannot be said about the geochemical properties of cryoconite and the possible interactions with glacial and peri-glacial...

The amount of reflected energy by snow and ice plays a fundamental role in their melting processes. Different non-ice materials (carbonaceous particles, mineral dust (MD), microorganisms, algae, etc.) can decrease the reflectance of snow and ice promoting the melt. The object of this paper is to assess the capability of field and satellite (EO-1 Hy...

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