Detailed 210Pb profiles were determined for four “Chernobyl dated” snowpits sampled during a wide-ranging survey of the Greenland ice sheet during the 1988 season. The profiles from widely separated pits show little or no coherence; even for two pits only 40 km apart the profiles differ in detail. There does not appear to have been any seasonality in the deposition of 210Pb onto the ice sheet in the two years since the Chernobyl accident. The total deposition of 210Pb during this period (10-20 bq m-2) was about 20 times less than has been observed at mid-latitude sites in the eastern United States. The three pits west of the ice-sheet divide recorded very similar depositional fluxes, while the one eastern pit had only two-thirds the average of the others, suggesting a west-to-east gradient in the deposition of 210Pb, and perhaps other continentally-derived submicron aerosols, onto the Greenland ice sheet.
