NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Dome Fuji and NEEM Ice Cores 150,000 Year Gas Data

Air in polar ice cores provides unique information on past climatic and atmospheric changes. We developed a new method combining wet extraction, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry for high-precision, simultaneous measurements of eight air components (CH4, N2O and CO2 concentrations; d15N, d18O, dO2/N2 and dAr/N2; and total air content) from an ice-core sample of ~60g. The ice sample is evacuated for ~2h and melted under vacuum, and the released air is continuously transferred into a sample tube at 10K within 10 min. The air is homogenized in the sample tube overnight at room temperature and split into two aliquots for mass spectrometric and gas chromatographic measurements. Care is taken to minimize (1) contamination of greenhouse gases by using a long evacuation time, (2) consumption of oxygen during sample storage by a passivation treatment on sample tubes, and (3) fractionation of isotopic ratios with a long homogenization time for splitting. Precision is assessed by analyzing standard gases with artificial ice and duplicate measurements of the Dome Fuji and NEEM ice cores. The overall reproducibility (1 SD) of duplicate ice-core analyses are 3.2 ppb, 2.2 ppb and 2.9 ppm for CH4, N2O and CO2 concentrations; 0.006 per mil, 0.011 per mil, 0.09 per mil and 0.12 per mil for d15N, d18O, dO2/N2 and dAr/N2; and 0.63 mLSTP kg-1 for total air content, respectively. Our new method successfully combines the high-precision, small-sample and multiple-species measurements, with a wide range of applications for ice-core paleoenvironmental studies.