Antarctic firn air and shallow ice core samples provide over 700 years of atmospheric history from the WAIS Divide site. The dataset contains elemental and isotopic composition measurements of atmospheric trace gases, collected by a collaborative team of six U.S. laboratories during a 2005-06 field season. It was created to support the interpretation of a subsequent deep ice-coring program planned for 2006-07.
Use Cases
- Analyze trends in trace gas species concentrations over a 700-year period to study pre-industrial atmospheric composition.
- Compare isotopic composition data across different gas species to investigate atmospheric source and sink processes.
- Use firn air movement and trapping data to calibrate models for interpreting gas records from deeper ice cores.
- Establish inter-comparable records of interrelated species by leveraging the coordinated sample allocation from multiple labs.
Strengths
- Covers over 700 years of atmospheric history derived from ice core and firn air samples.
- Data produced by a coordinated collaboration of six specialized U.S. laboratories to ensure consistency.
- Includes two 300+ meter ice cores recovered during the initial field season, providing substantial sample depth.
Limitations
- Sample size and specific row/column counts are unknown from the description.
- Data is temporally stale, with the last update recorded in May 2009 and primary collection in 2005-06.
- Geographic scope is limited to a single proposed drilling site in Antarctica (WAIS Divide), which may not be representative of global conditions.
Provenance
- Source
- AMD_USAPDC
- Collection Method
- Collected via shallow drilling program recovering ice cores and firn air samples during the 2005-06 Antarctic field season.
- Time Range
- Over 700 years of atmospheric history, with sample collection occurring in 2005-06.
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- WAIS Divide site, Antarctica.