Ice-penetrating radar internal stratigraphy over Dome C and the wider East Antarctic Plateau

The data set published here consists of 26 ice-penetrating radar IRHs (internal reflecting horizons) which were traced across multiple ice-penetrating radar surveys that deployed several generations of modern ice-penetrating radar sounders over a decade, between 2008 and 2018, over the Dome C region of the East Antarctic Plateau. The data set is associated to publication: Cavitte, M. G. P, Young, D. A, Mulvaney, R., Ritz, C., Greenbaum, J. S., Ng, G., Kempf, S. D., Quartini, E., Muldoon, G. R., Paden, J., Frezzotti, M., Roberts, J. L. , Tozer, C. R. , Schroeder, D. M. and Blankenship, D. D. A detailed radiostratigraphic data set for the central East Antarctic Plateau spanning from the Holocene to the mid-Pleistocene, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4759–4777, 2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4759-2021.

We can subdivide the radar sounders used into three sets. The primary set was collected by the University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) as part of the ICECAP project) between 2008 and 2015. This includes the Oldest Ice candidate A (OIA) survey flown by ICECAP in January 2016. Data were collected with the High Capacity Airborne Radar Sounder (HiCARS) 1 & 2 and its Multifrequency Airborne Radar-sounder for Full-phase Assessment (MARFA) descendant. The data was collected from a DC-3T Basler which operated from Concordia Station.

The second set consists of the Vostok-Dome C airborne radar transect was flown by the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at the University of Kansas using the Multi-Channel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) in a single flight line in 2013. A P-3 Orion operating from McMurdo Station collected these data as part of NASA Operation Ice Bridge.

The third set consists of a subset of the LDC ground-based radar survey, towed behind a PistenBully PB300 tractor, collected by the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice (BE-OI) European Consortium using the British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) Deep Looking Radio Echo Sounder (DELORES) radar system. Each IRH has been traced in all three radar sets and is published here as a single csv and netcdf file. Formats are self-documented in these csv/netcdf files.

Where HiCARS and MCoRDS radar transects are used, the IRH is provided at a 1 km spatial resolution, where DELORES radar transects are used, the IRH is provided at a 250 m spatial resolution.

The 26 IRHs published here were traced semi-automatically by first author Marie Cavitte, using Landmark's Decision Space Desktop software and its built-in picker.

The IRHs are dated at the EDC ice core using the AICC2012 timescale (Veres et al., 2013; Bazin et al., 2013).

Ice core ages are transferred onto the IRHs on radar transect MCM/JKB1a/EDMC01a at distance_m (column in the data sets) = 110.153 m along the transect. That radar point of closest approach is 94 m away from the ice core site. Depth and age uncertainties associated to each IRH are quantified n the associated publication: Cavitte, M. G. P, Young, D. A, Mulvaney, R., Ritz, C., Greenbaum, J. S., Ng, G., Kempf, S. D., Quartini, E., Muldoon, G. R., Paden, J., Frezzotti, M., Roberts, J. L. , Tozer, C. R. , Schroeder, D. M. and Blankenship, D. D. A detailed radiostratigraphic data set for the central East Antarctic Plateau spanning from the Holocene to the mid-Pleistocene, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4759–4777, 2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4759-2021.

Besides NSF this dataset is the result of additional support from NERC grant - NE/D003733/1, NASA grants - NX08AN68G, NNX09AR52G, NNX11AD33G, NNX13AD53A, and funding from the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation.

\nNote that the dataset was archived before the accompanying paper was officially published. The abstract and dataset description has been updated to cite the correct reference to the ESSD paper (Cavitte et al., 2021) after the paper was published. The headers of the actual data files contain only a placeholder to this reference.