Polar ice cores have provided tremendous advances in our knowledge of past climate change. They also contain an archive of geochemical data, which can certainly delineate some of the forcing factors that govern climate change. However, our 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 book outlines the potential and problems of ice core chemistry and discusses the processes involved in air-snow transfer. It gives the state of current knowledge and an agenda for future research.

Inhalt
The record of aerosol deposited species in ice cores, and problems of interpretation.- Acidic gases (HCl, HF, HN03, HCOOH, and CH3COOH): a review of ice core data and some preliminary discussions on their air-snow relationships.- The record of gases and reactive species in ice cores, and problems of interpretation.- Atmospheric transport pathways for the Arctic.- Occurrence and trends of pollution in the Arctic troposphere.- One year's continuous aerosol sampling at Summit in central Greenland.- Central Antarctica: Atmospheric chemical composition and atmospheric transport.- Coastal Antarctica: Atmospheric chemical composition and atmospheric transport.- Chemical reactions in the polar troposphere relevant to C, S, and N compounds.- Modeling framework for atmospheric trace gas measurements at the air-snow interface.- Overview of field data on the deposition of aerosol-associated apecies to the surface snow of polar glaciers, particularly recent work in Greenland.- The deposition of particles and gases to ice sheets.- Overview of recent field experiments for the study of the air-snow transfer of H202 and HCHO.- Conceptual framework for interpretation of exchange processes.- Processes at ice surfaces: physical uptake and reaction.- Possible chemical transformations in snow and ice induced by solar (UV photons) and cosmic irradiation (muons).- Metamorphism of polar firn: significance of microstructure in energy, mass and chemical species transfer.- The effects of snow ventilation on chemical concentrations.- Wind-blown snow: sublimation, transport and changes to polar snow.- Turbulent exchange of momentum and scalars in the surface layer over Antarctic snow and ice.- Thermodynamics of the solute layer on the surface of ice.- Gas diffusion in firn.- Location, movement andreactions of impurities in solid ice.- Extended abstracts of selected poster presentations.- Firn properties affecting gas exchange at Summit, Greenland: Ventilation possibilities.- Interactions of gas phase HCl and HN03 with ice.- Climate and atmospheric tracers modelling with GCM, polar applications.- Atmospheric residence times influence on tracer concentrations in remote polar areas.- The behaviour of organic chemicals in snow.- Mass size distributions for atmospheric particulate elements at the Zeppelin background station in Ny Alesund, Spitsbergen.- Air/snow transfer studies at the high-alpine site Jungfraujoch, Switzerland.- On the spatial variability of impurity content and stable isotopie composition in recent Summit snow.- Fluorocarbon tracers of the age of air in Alpine firn.- The peroxide record from the DSS ice core, Law Dome, Antarctica: Preliminary results.- Where are we going? the ice core-paleoclimate inverse problem.- Working group reports.- A: Aerosol species.- B: Acidic gases.- C: Oxidants.- Conclusions and recommendations to ice core community.- ARW participants.- Author index.