Investigation of Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Through Oxygen and Sulfur Isotopes in Volcanic Sulfate

This dataset contains chemical measurements of volcanic sulfate deposits in
Antarctic snow, in a collaborative project between South Dakota State
University (SDSU, Jihong Cole-Dai, PI) and University of California, San Diego
(UCSD, Mark Thiemens, PI). The sulfate deposits of several major volcanic
eruptions over the last 1000 years were found, by means of ion chromatographic
analysis of major ions, in a few large snow blocks and a number of South Pole
ice cores retrieved in 2004-2005. The volcanic events include: Pinatubo (1991),
Cerro Hudson (1991), Tambora (1815), Unknown (1809), Kuwae (1453/54), and
Unknown (1259). The volcanic sulfate was extracted from the snow blocks and ice
cores, concentrated, and subsequently analyzed by isotope mass spectrometry for
multiple oxygen (17O/16O, 18O/16O) and sulfur (33S, 34S, 36S) isotope
composition, which is used to infer the atmospheric, and stratospheric in
particular, chemical processes and dynamics of the oxidation of volcanic sulfur
dioxide to sulfate.

The dataset is organized by volcanic events in the snow and ice samples. For
each event, the following data are included: (1) the continuous record of
sulfate concentration along the depth of the core section in which the event is
located, (2) the total mass of volcanic sulfate in the extracted sample(s) of
the event, (3) isotopic composition of each volcanic sulfate sample and its
associated background sulfate sample.