1750 to 2010 Refractory Black Carbon Deposition from a Global Ice-Core Array, Arctic, Antarctic, and alpine regions

Refractory black carbon (rBC) aerosols in air and precipitation result from incomplete combustion. Prior to 18th century industrialization, the primary emission sources were wildfires and agricultural fires. After industrialization, fossil fuel burning has become an important emission source as well. Because these aerosols are import contributors to Earth’s radiative forcing both in the air and when deposited to bright surfaces such as fresh snow, quantifying past rBC emissions is critical to accurate Earth System Modeling. This data set contains 1750 to 2010 annual rBC depositional fluxes measured in a global array of 31, mostly polar ice cores. They were used (Zhang et al., Nature Communications, 2024) to reconstruct atmospheric rBC emissions using the atmospheric chemical transport GEOS-Chem. Details on the rBC measurement methods and chronology development are provided in the associated references for the individual ice core records.