Das Projekt "Palaeo climate reconstruction from the highly continental Mongolian Altai" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Paul Scherrer Institut durchgeführt. In order to place recent climate change in a longer term context the reconstruction of climatic variations on annual, interannual, and decadal time scales of the last 1000 years is a priority target in current climate research. In its recent report the IPCC recommends that in order to reduce uncertainty associated with present palaeoclimate estimates of Northern Hemispheric temperatures, further work is necessary to produce many more, especially early, palaeoclimate series with much wider geographical coverage. This project aims to reconstruct different climate parameters from a very continental site with low data coverage, the Altai mountain range in Central Asia. For this purpose, an ice core will be recovered from a high-mountain glacier in the Mongolian Altai, suitable for palaeo climate reconstruction. To achieve this goal as a first step, a reconnaissance study will be conducted in order to find the best glacier site. Ideally, a survey helicopter flight to two or three potential glacier sites will be performed. Ground Penetrating Radar will be applied to determine the ice thickness. Based on the results of the radar survey at the most promising sites, shallow firn cores will be collected. The firn cores will be analysed for chemical composition and stable isotope ratios. All parameters together will allow evaluating the quality of the preservation of the climate and atmospheric signals. A first estimation of the annual accumulation and the approximate age will be made. Based on these data the site for deep drilling will be selected and in a second step the deep ice core will be recovered. This project will be conducted in collaboration between the Analytical Chemistry Group of the Laboratory of Radiochemistry and Environmental Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institut, the Glaciology Group of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, the Institut for Water and Environmental Problems SB RAS, Barnaul, Russia, and the Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Methods used are field measurements and ice core chemical analysis in the laboratory. Existing instrumental climate data and other available palaeo data are collected, especially meteorological data from four climate stations operated in the Mongolian Altai for the last 60 years.