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WP 2.3 Archives of paleoclimatic data from mountain and continental regions

This WP deals with the construction of accessible paleoclimate archives from mountain and continental regions (ice cores, lakes and peat bogs data, palynological data, dendrocrhonologies). Quality control on paleoclimatic data will be performed through the analysis of individual data records and cross-data comparisons.

Activities

• Task 1. Creation of a thematic archive/portal for paleoclimatic data access from continental regions and to facilitate access to the products of the analysis and to paleoclimatic maps.

• Task 2. Set up of a WebGis dedicated to the non.polar glacier archive, including a thorough archival research in the scientific literature to identify all non-polar sites where ice cores were extracted. The relevant metadata for the characterization of the site will be indicated. A Decision Support System (DSS) to analyze all parameters that allow the selection of the glacier areas (drilling targets) will be built.

• Task 3. Development of a cryo-preservation center of the glacier samples collected during the NextData project. The samples will be accompanied by the basic metadata information, that will be made available online through the web GIS and will be open for use by the scientific community.

Results

Archives of paleoclimatic data with specific chronologies have been made available. Ice cores IDB2.0 database has been published; it contains data and metadata of non-polar ice cores and it ia available on web portal http://geomatic.disat.unimib.it/home/geomatic/idb2.

Within the framework of the Italy2K programme, a geoportal (http://geomatic.disat.unimib.it/paleodata) has been developed containing the data and metadata of the paleoclimatic proxies that the different research groups have made available. The data can be queried, displayed and downloaded. Both data and metadata are available for each piece of data. In addition, a database has been created with metadata of significant denchronologies of the climate of the last 2K years. For these data, the map in WebGis and the related metadata are available (http://geomatic.disat.unimib.it/dendro). On the same geoportal climatic and paleoclimatic maps produced within the project has been published. A physical archive of ice cores has been established at the Eurocold laboratory of the University of Milan - Bicocca, which will be a starting point for the foundation of a "Museum of Italian paleoclimate".