Local vs global climate change-investigation of dust from deep ice cores

A substantial improvement in the study of the physical and radiative characteristics of dust particles and in climate models has occurred in order to reliably predict their impact on climate. However, key properties of mineral particles are still little known so that global dust cycle simulations are still poor. Dust size distribution is a key issue together with particle morphology, mineralogical composition and optical characteristics. Mineralogy of dust is required for source identification. The geochemical and isotopic composition of mineral dust is also a useful tool for discriminating its geographic origin. However, the analysis of low concentration insoluble atmosphere dust depositions is a challenging research area because of the extremely small amount of material available in crystalline form