Continuous-flow measurements of the complete water isotope ratios (D/H, 17O/16O, 18O/16) from the South Pole ice core

• Main Authors: Tyler, Jones, Kahle, Emma, Morris, Valerie, Schauer, Andrew, Steig, Eric J., Vaughn, Bruce, White, James
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) Data Center 2021
• Subjects: Deuterium; Hydrogen; Stable Isotopes; Ice Core Chemistry; Ice Core; Oxygen; Climate; Ice; Glaciology; Paleoclimate; Glaciers/Ice Sheet; Snow/Ice; Cryosphere; Antarctica; Arctic; South Pole; Antarc*; ice core; Ice Sheet; Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.15784/601429; https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601429

This data set provides high-precision, continuous-flow measurements for the the oxygen isotopes (17O/16O, 18O/16O) and hydrogen isotopes (D/H) of water from the 1751-m South Pole ice core. This data set should be considered the definitive data set, superceding the previous submissions (doi:10.15784/601239 and doi:10.15784/601396). These were been generated under a collaborative effort by the University of Washington Isolab (NSF Award#1443105) and the University of Colorado INSTAAR Isotope Lab (NSF Award# 1443328). This data set contains high-resolution stable isotope data (dD, d18O, and d17O) for the South Pole Ice core. Drilling was initiated in 2014 and completed in 2016, and subsequent analyses on the ice were performed at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado using Continuous Flow Analysis (CFA) as described in Steig et al. (2021). Entire meters of core are slowly melted and resulting water is converted to vapor for analysis with two cavity ring down spectrometers (CRDS), a Picarro L-2130 for dD and d18O, and a Picarro L-2140 for d17O. Each meter of ice takes approximately 40 minutes to melt, and data are generated nominally at 1Hz, resulting in approximately 2,400 data points per meter. Each data point is ascribed to a specific depth using a depth-assignment algorithm that accounts for mixing within the system. Additional details about the data processing are given in the paper (Steig et al., 2021) and in the readme files for the previous data set submission (doi: 10.15784/601239). Five types of files are included. A) d17O, d18O, and dD from the L2140-i at 0.5 cm resolution. B) d18O, and dD from the L2130-i at 0.5 cm resolution, as well as d17O-equivalent, recalculated from the combination of L2140-i d17O and d18O data and L2130-i d18O data. The SP19 age scale is also included in this file. C) d17O, d18O, and dD data averaged to 100-year resolution, from data set (B). D) Raw data from both instruments, archived as netcdf files. Depth information is included with the L2130-i files, but not the L2140-i files. The data in both sets of files can be synchronized to the time-of-measurement ("epoch"). Data set (B) should be considered the definitive South Pole water isotope data set.