The Law Dome ice core 2000 year dataset collection.

Full description

This collection of datasets bring together a coherent set of 2000 years of annually dated ice core records from a compilation of cores drilled at the Dome Summit South (DSS) site at Law Dome, East Antarctica. This version provides improved dating as well as updates and extends some previously released versions to span the time period from -11 to 2017CE.

This compilation comprises of records from 4 cores from the DSS site drilled at different times:
DSS1617 (66 46'26"S 11248'41"E) drilled on 10/02/2017 using an electromechanical (Eclipse) drill,
DSS99 (66 46'14"S 112 48'25"E ) drilled between 20/02/00-06/3/00 with a thermal (Horace) drill,
DSS97 (66 46'38"S    112 48'41"E) drilled 28/10/97-26/11/97 with an electromechanical (Eclipse) drill
DSSMain (66 46'11"S 112 8'25"E) drilled between the years 1987-1993 using an Istuk electromechanical drill.

The dataset download contains four files:

DSS_2k_age_horizons.csv
This file contains the depths of each year for the compiled core. Years are primarily determined by the seasonal variations in the annual water stable isotope data.

DSS_2k_chemistry_level1.csv
This file contains the per-sample trace chemistry data for each of the analysed ions. This data forms the basis for the annually averaged chemistry datasets as well as the seasonal sea salts.

DSS_2k_summer_centred.csv
This file contains annually averaged values for species which peak in winter: nitrate and non-sea-salt sulphate.

DSS_2k_winter_centred.csv
This file contains annually averaged values for species which peak in summer: annual accumulation, annual layer thickness, del180, sodium, chloride, magnesium and sulphate as well as the annual values for seasonally averaged (December-March, December-May and June-November) sea salts. For the seasonal average columns, a NaN value indicates that a seasonal average was not calculated.

Further details and analysis methods are described in the accompanying data description paper:
Jong, L. M., Plummer, C. T., Roberts, J. L., Moy, A. D., Curran, M. A. J., Vance, T. R., Pedro, J., Long, C., Nation, M., Mayewski, P. A., and van Ommen, T. D.: 2000 years of annual ice core data from Law Dome, East Antarctica, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2021-408, in review, 2022.

Lineage

Progress Code: completed

Notes

Purpose
This compilation consists of subsets of largely pre-existing datasets, but with some extensions and with updated dating, bringing all the datasets onto one consistent age scale over the 2000 years. The aim of bringing these sets together with a consistent and updated age scale is to enable the use of this data in future research such as climate reconstructions, larger scale data compilations. Updated releases of the data ensures the greatest overlap with the instrumental data for the best possible calibration for reconstructions of past climate and modelling efforts for future climate prediction.