Acidic Gases (HCl, HF, HN03, HCOOH, and CH3COOH): A Review of Ice Core Data and Some Preliminary Discussions on their Air-Snow Relationships

In spite of their relative remoteness, the atmosphere of the poloar region is already disturbed by human activities. The development of the so called ″ozone hole″ over Antarctica in spring and the Arctic haze in winter represent good examples of the fragility of these remote atmospheres. One interesting characteristic of these high latitute regions lies in solid precipitation which has been accumulating over polar ice caps for the last several hundred thousands years. Assuming a sufficient knowledge of the relation lingking the composition of the snow and that of the atmosphere at the deposition, ice cores extented from Grrenland and Antractica offer a unique possibility to reconstruct the chemical composition of our pre-industrial atmosphere. They can also help to investigate the variability of our natural atmosphere over time periods as long as several thousands of years.