Chemical Exchange Between the Atmosphere and Polar Snow

Polar ice cores have provided advances in knowledge of past climate change and they also contain an archive of chemical data, which can delineate some of the forcing factors that govern climate change. However, the ability to interpret these data is severely curtailed by lack of knowledge of the processes governing the transfer of chemical species from the air to the snow. This text outlines the potential and problems of ice core chemistry and discusses the processes involved in air-snow transfer.