Accumulation of Environmental Radioactivity on the Surface of a High Arctic Ice Cap (Flade Isblink, NE Greenland).

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.

Monte Carlo techniques for in-situ specific activity estimation of radionuclides with a portable coaxial HPGe: preliminary results.

In this work, gamma-ray spectrometry with HPGe detectors is used to measure radionuclides' specific activity (A) in soils. The main purpose of the paper is to present a general procedure to assess A in soils from in-situ acquisitions. The soil from two experimental sites was analyzed both in the field, with a portable HPGe detector, and in the laboratory, with a BEGe detector.

Jarosite formation in deep Antarctic ice provides a window into acidic, water-limited weathering on Mars.

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-analytical indication of jarosite formation within deep ice.

Cs contamination in the Adamello glacier: Improving the analytical method.

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 Cs. Our results show that in glacier ice Cs is tightly bound to insoluble particulate matter inside the ice core, and it is therefore possible to restrict γ-spectroscopy analysis to particulate matter only. We show how the sensibility of the detection limit can be improved by almost one order of magnitude by using a well-type detector instead of a coaxial one.