High-resolution stable water isotope and glacio-chemical composition of a firn core from the northern Antarctic Peninsula

• Main Authors: Hoffmann-Abdi, Kirstin, Fernandoy, Francisco, Meyer, Hanno, Freitag, Johannes, Opel, Thomas, McConnell, Joseph R, Schneider, Christoph
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic Peninsula; ANT-Land_2016_AntarcticPeninsula; API2016; AWI_Envi; AWI Antarctic Land Expedition; firn core; glacio-chemistry; ICEDRILL; Ice drill; OH-12; Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems @ AWI; stable water isotopes; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Arctic; Ice cap; ice core
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.939719; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.939719

The firn core OH-12 was retrieved from Plateau Laclavere, a small ice cap on the northernmost end of the Antarctic Peninsula at about 1090 m above sea level in January 2016. The core was drilled down to 19.93 m depth. Subsamples for stable water isotope analysis were obtained from the core at 5 cm resolution. Stable water isotope measurements were performed in autumn 2016 using cavity ring-down spectrometers L2130-i and L2140-i (Picarro Inc.) coupled to an auto-sampler (L2130-i: PAL HTC-xt, CTC Analytics AG; L2140-i: Picarro Autosampler, Picarro Inc.). Glacio-chemical parameters (hydrogen peroxide, sulphur, sodium, black carbon) were determined in summer 2017 using a Continuous Flow Analysis (CFA) system as described by Röthlisberger et al. (2000) and McConnell et al. (2002, 2007). Sulphur and sodium concentrations were measured using two Thermo Finnigan Element2 High Resolution-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (HR-ICP-MS) instruments. Black carbon (BC) was analyzed with a Single Particle Soot Photometer inter-cavity laser system (SP2, Droplet Measurement Technologies). Values of sea-salt sodium (ssNa) and non-sea-salt sulphur (nssS) were calculated from sodium and sulphur concentrations applying the approach of Röthlisberger et al. (2002) and Sigl et al. (2013) and using relative abundances from Bowen (Bowen, 1979). The core was dated using annual layer counting of hydrogen peroxide measurements. We additionally accounted for precipitation intermittency at the drill site by using precipitation data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5 Reanalysis extracted from the grid point closest to the firn-core drill site. The core covers the period from July 2011 to January 2016. The data has been used for investigating recent climate and environmental changes in the northern Antarctic Peninsula region providing the basis for the retrieval and analysis of a deeper ice core from the same site.