Snow chemistry along a 3000 km long traverse inland East Antarctica

Surface snow for chemical analyzes was sampled with a spacing of approximately 50 kilometres along the entire traverse route. Snow was also sampled with high resolution in grids, pits and trenches. The samples are analyzed for major ions, stable water isotopes, 10Be and soot. The scientific programmes were linked to several international consortia and the entire project was part of the Trans-Antarctic Scientific Traverses Expeditions ? Ice Divide of East Antarctica (TASTE-IDEA). The scientific programmes were developed from the International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expeditions (ITASE), the Japanese deep ice core drilling programme Dome F (NIPR) and the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA). We ran a 3000 km traverse between the Japanese station Syowa and the Swedish station Wasa, via the deep ice core drilling sites Dome Fuji and EPICA-DML. The route covered areas in both the Antarctic Southern Atlantic Ocean sector and the Antarctic Indian Ocean sector. The traverse was carried out during the austral summer 2007/08.