Funding:

This publication was generated in the frame of Beyond EPICA. The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 815384 (Oldest Ice Core). It is supported by national partners and funding agencies in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Logistic support is mainly provided by PNRA and IPEV through the Concordia Station system. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union funding agency or other national funding bodies.

Data description:

Sulfate profile from 0 to 42 meters in a Little Dome C (Antarctica) ice core drilled in 2017/2018.

One 100-meter ice-core was collected during the 2017/2018 summer campaign in Antarctica, at Little Dome C (~40 km of Concordia Station, 122.469022735°E, 75.2026653874°S), with the initial goal of drilling a pre-hole for the fast probe Subglacior. The core was saved to date the first tens of meters of the drilling, through the identification of the main volcanic horizons on this period of time.

The core was logged and bagged in the field, transferred back to Grenoble (France) and further processed at IGE (Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement), following this protocol:

- decontamination of the external layer by scalpel scrapping

- longitudinal cutting with a band saw of a 2 cm stick out of the most external layer

- sampling of the ice stick at a 2 cm resolution

- thawing the samples in 50mL centrifuge tubes and transferring them into 15mL centrifuge tubes positioned in an autosampler

- automatic analysis of sulfate concentration, with a Metrohm IC 850 in suppressed mode (NaOH at 7 mM, suppressor H2SO4 at 50 mM, Dionex AG11 column) with regular calibration (every 50 samples).

The obtained sulfate profile evidences 14 volcanic eruptions also identified and dated in Gautier et al. 2019 (doi:10.1038/s41467-019-08357-0).