Earth Sciences Commons^™

A Model For The Formation Of Layered Soda-Straw Stalactites, Bence Paul, Russell Drysdale, Helen Green, Jon Woodhead, John Hellstrom, Rolan Eberhard

International Journal of Speleology

Climate records based upon instrumental data such as rainfall measurements are usually only available for approximately the last 150 years at most. To fully investigate decadal-scale climate variation, however, these records must be extended by the use of climate proxies. Soda-straw stalactites (straws) are a previously under-utilised potential source of such data. In this contribution we investigate the structure and formation of straws and look at some issues that may affect the reliability of straw-based palaeoclimate records. We use laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) trace element analysis to document surface contamination features that have the potential to obscure annual …