Adrien Ooms

Research topics

My research focuses on understanding the transition from freshly fallen snow to firn in the vicinity of Dome C, East Antarctica, and its impact on the chemical and water stable isotope content of firn. The aims are twofold: to improve our understanding of isotopic signal in ice-cores and temperature reconstructions for paleo-climatology, and to be able to use observations of isotopes in Antarctic snow to tune isotope enabled Climate Models and improve future climate projections.

Central Antarctica is a very dry environment where snow precipitation amounts are less than 10 cm / year at key ice-core drilling sites. Thin snow layers are deposited on a rough meter-scale topography and further redistributed and mixed by strong winds. Annual snow layer thickness exhibits a large spatial variability, which makes it difficult to interpret the isotopic record of a single core at multi-annual to decadal scales. Moreover, the snow remains exposed for a longer period at the surface, where it is subject to condensation and sublimation fluxes and temperature gradient metamorphism, processes that are associated with isotopic fractionation. These post-depositional processes might have a stronger impact than previously thought on the decadal signal of ice-cores. I am working on quantifying these effects in observations in firn, and reproducing them in ice proxy simulations (Proxy System Model).

Publications

Adrien Ooms, Mathieu Casado, Ghislain Picard, Laurent Arnaud, Maria Hörhold, Andrea Spolaor, Rita Traversi, Joel Savarino, Patrick Ginot, Pete Akers, Birthe Twarloh, and Valérie Masson-Delmotte
Inter-annual snow accumulation and meter-scale variability from trench measurements at Dome C, Antarctica
The Cryosphere, 2026 (preprint)
DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-2025-3259

Emma Samin, Amaëlle Landais, Elise Fourré, Mathieu Casado, Adrien Ooms, Niels Dutrievoz,
Cécile Agosta, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Thomas Combacal, Elsa Gautier, and Bénédicte Minster
Post-deposition processes affecting water stable isotope records at Little Dome C, Antarctica: new records from two firn cores and virtual firn core modelling
The Cryosphere, 2026 (preprint)
DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-2026-871

Outreach

In 2025, have been giving lectures to the general audience about ice core paleo-climatology and future climate projections at the Palais de la découverte, Paris.