ASPeCt-Bio: Chlorophyll a in Antarctic sea ice from historical ice core dataset

The ASPeCt - Bio dataset is a compilation of currently available sea ice chlorophyll a (chl-a) data from pack ice (i.e., excluding fast ice) cores collected during 32 cruises to the Southern Ocean sea ice zone from 1983 to 2008 (Table S1). Data come from peer-reviewed publications, cruise reports, data repositories and direct contributions by field-research teams. During all cruises the chl-a concentration (in micrograms per litre) was measured from melted ice core sections, using standard procedures, e.g., by melting the ice at less than 5 degrees C in the dark; filtering samples onto glassfibre filters; and fluorometric analysis according to standard protocols [Holm-Hansen et al., 1965; Evans et al., 1987]. Ice samples were melted either directly or in filtered sea water, which does not yield significant differences in chl-a concentration [Dieckmann et al., 1998]. The dataset consists of 1300 geo-referenced ice cores, consisting of 8247 individual ice core sections, and including 990 vertical profiles with a minimum of three sections.

An updated dataset was provided in 2017-12-15, which included a compilation Net CDF file.