Description
Summary:The drilling of the 10.5 m high Nori pingo that stands at 32 m asl in Grøndalen Valley (Spitsbergen) performed in April 2019 reached a depth of 21.8 m bs (core #13, starting from 42.5 m asl, 77.99483 °N, 14.59009 °E) and revealed 16.1 m thick massive ice. The core was obtained with a portable gasoline-powered rotary drilling rig (UKB 12/25, Vorovskiy Machine Factory, Ekaterinburg, Russia). The core pieces with diameter 112-76 mm were lifted for sampling to the surface every 30–50 cm. After documentation and cryolithological description core pieces were sealed in zip lock bags. Ice samples were split in two parts - one part for stable isotope analyses, another part for ion content measurement. They were kept frozen for transportation while sediment samples were kept unfrozen. Moisture content was analyzed in laboratory by measuring sediment samples weight before and after drying. The stable water isotope composition (δ18O and δD) of massive pingo ice was analyzed at the Climate and Environmental Research Laboratory (CERL, Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia) using a Picarro L2120- i analyzer. After every five samples the working standard (SPB-2, δ18O = -9.66 ‰ and δD = -74.1 ‰) was measured. SPB-2 is made of distilled St. Petersburg tap water and is calibrated against the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards VSMOW-2 (Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water 2), GISP (Greenland Ice Sheet Precipitation), and SLAP-2 (Standard Light Antarctic Precipitation 2). The reproducibility of the results is 0.08 ‰ for δ18O and 0.4 ‰ for δD and was assessed by re-measuring a random selection of 10% of the total samples. The measurement error is thus 1-2 orders of magnitude less than the natural isotopic variability of pingo ice, which is satisfactory for the purpose of this study. The δ18O and δD values are given as per mil (‰) difference to the VSMOW-2 standard. The deuterium excess (d) is calculated as d = δD - 8δ18O29. The ion content of sedimentary permafrost samples from core #13 was ...