Westerly moisture transport to the middle of Himalayas revealed from the high deuterium excess

Previous studies found extremely high d-excess in both ice core and glacial melt water in Dasuopu glacier, Xixiabangma, middle of Himalayas. These values are much higher than the global average and those measured in southwest monsoon precipitation. The d-excess variation in over one year at Nyalam station will clarify this phenomenon. Studies show that the high d-excess is related to the seasonal variation of moisture transport to this region. The d-excess values are low during the southwest monsoon active periods, when moisture originated from the humid ocean surface. The d-excess values are higher in non-monsoon months, when moisture is derived from westerly transport. Winter and spring precipitation accounts for a substantial portion of the annual precipitation, resulting in higher d-excess in the yearly precipitation in the middle of Himalayas than other parts of the southern Tibetan Plateau. This finding reveals that the precipitation in the middle of Himalayas is not purely from southwest monsoon, but a large portion from the westerly transport, which is very important for ice core study in this area.

Change of bacterialcommunity in the Malan Ice Core and its relation toclimate and environment

In order to understand the relationship be- tween the community structure of bacteria in ice core and the past climate and environment, we initiated the study on the microorganisms in the three selected ice samples from the Malan ice core drilled from the Tibetan Plateau. The 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) molecules were directly amplified from the melt water samples, and three 16S rDNA clone li- braries were established. Among 94 positive clones, eleven clones with unique restriction pattern were used for partial sequence and compared with eight reported sequences from the same ice core. The phylotypes were divided into 5 groups: alpha, beta, gamma proteobacteria; CFB, and other eubac- teria group. Among them, there were many “typical Malan glacial bacteria” pertaining to psychrophilies and new bacte- ria found in the ice core. At a longer time scale, the concen- tration distribution of “typical Malan glacial bacteria” with depth showed negative correlation with temperature varia- tions and was coincident with dirty layer. It implied the in- fluence of temperature on the microbial record through im- pact on the concentrations of the “typical Malan glacial bac- teria”. In addition, the nutrition contained in ice was another important factor controlling the distribution of microbial population in ice core section. Moreover, the result displayed an apparent layer distribution of bacterial community in the ice core section, which reflected the microbial response to the past climatic and environmental conditions at the time of deposition.