Drake Passage deep-sea coral U-Th and 14C data for Southern Ocean corals
Changes of circulation pattern in the Southern Ocean have been invoked to explain a significant portion of the increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation. However, the accurate timing and thus underlying mechanisms of these changes are still controversial, requiring knowledge of different water masses movements with absolute age constraints. Aragonitic scleractinian deep-sea corals, recovered from a broad range of depths in the Drake Passage, provide a unique opportunity to investigate Southern Ocean ventilation with precise U-Th age control. A rapid age-screening technique achieved by coupling a laser system to Multi-Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (MC-ICPMS) enables us to get an approximate age distribution of the coral samples in order to select appropriate specimens for more accurate isotope-dilution age and radiocarbon age determination. Thus far more than 1800 deep-sea corals from the Drake Passage have been dated using this and other techniques, and about 400 samples have been dated precisely using isotope-dilution method. The age results show that deep-sea corals can be found across nearly the whole of the last deglaciation across a wide range of depths and locations. With known radiocarbon contents and U-Th ages of the deep-sea corals, the ventilation state of different water masses in the past can be assessed based on their decay-corrected 14C activities. This data submission includes all U-Th and 14C data available for the Drake Passage corals.
Funding was provided by the NERC standard grant NE/N003861/1.
Simple
- Alternate title
- Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01213
- Date (Publication)
- 2019-08-07
- Identifier
- http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01213
- Maintenance and update frequency
- unknown Unknown
- Keywords
-
- NDGO0001
- NERC OAI Harvesting
-
- NERC_DDC
- GCMD Parameter Valids
-
- EARTH SCIENCE > Oceans > Ocean Chemistry > Radiocarbon
- EARTH SCIENCE > Oceans > Ocean Circulation
- EARTH SCIENCE > Paleoclimate > Ocean/Lake Records > Coral Deposits
- EARTH SCIENCE > Paleoclimate > Ocean/Lake Records > Isotopes
- EARTH SCIENCE > Paleoclimate > Ocean/Lake Records > Radiocarbon
- BAS Free-text keywords
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- Drake Passage
- Southern Ocean
- U-Th dating
- deep-sea coral
- radiocarbon
- Use limitation
- This data is governed by the NERC data policy http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy/ and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- This data is governed by the NERC data policy http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy/ and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Biota
- Oceans
- Begin date
- 2008-01-01
- End date
- 2011-12-31
- Reference system identifier
- OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
- Distribution format
-
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
Domain consistency
- Measure identification
- INSPIRE / Conformity_001
Conformance result
- Date
- Explanation
- See the referenced specification
- Pass
- No
- Statement
- The long-term external reproducibility of [230Th/238U] (activity ratio) was better than 3per mille (n=42, 2 S.D.). Due to the uncertainty in the modern-day 230Th/232Th atomic ratio (2±2 × 10-4, 2 S.D.) that we applied to correct the initial 230Th and do the error propagation, the final age uncertainties largely depend on the 232Th concentrations. To minimize the influence of initial 230Th contamination on the final age uncertainties, coral samples with high 232Th concentrations were duplicated to get the lowest possible 232Th concentration.
- File identifier
- GB_NERC_BAS_PDC_01213 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2019-08-07
- Metadata standard name
- NERC profile of ISO19115:2003
- Metadata standard version
- 1.0