Meteoric smoke concentration in the Vostok ice core estimated from superparamagnetic relaxation and some consequences for estimates of Earth accretion rate

Abstract

We measured the magnetization of glacial and interglacial ice from the Vostok core to estimate the meteoric smoke concentration in Antarctic ice. We have found that, within the uncertainty of the method, the smoke concentration in ice in Antarctica is equivalent to that previously measured in Greenland ice. The virtually identical smoke concentrations despite the different ice accumulation rates in Greenland and Antarctica suggest that wet deposition is the main deposition mechanism for such ultra-small particles. Given the typical scavenging ratios for atmospheric aerosols, this would imply that previous estimates of accretion rate based on dry deposition are likely to be appreciably overestimated