Category:Ice Cores Working Group

Credit: British Library

Overview

In the Linked Earth context, a working group (WG) is a self-organized coalition of knowledgeable experts, whose activities are governed herewith. This page is dedicated to the discussion of data and metadata standards for proxies based on glacier ice, and aims to formulate a set of recommendations for such a standard.

Specific tasks

We recommend that discussions focus on the following considerations, and explore potential commonalities.

For each observation type, we recommend:

• structuring discussions around what scientific questions one would want to ask of the data
• listing essential, recommended, and optional information for:
  • the measurements themselves
  • any inference made from the measurements (e.g. calibration to temperature)
  • the underlying uncertainties, and what those numbers correspond to (e.g. 1-sigma or 2-sigma?)
• providing an ideal data table, so the community knows what to report and how to report it.
• providing separate recommendations for new and legacy datasets, and for how to label measured and inferred variable (e.g. δD is measured, temperature is inferred)
• thinking about how the rest of the paleoscience community, or other (non)scientists may make use of the data you describe.

Ice core projects are inherently collaborative in nature, and have thus developed mechanisms for data exchange, including some form of standards. We do not ask this WG to re-invent the wheel; if these standards are defined somewhere, please copy/paste freely here.

A few categories worth thinking about:

Data Streams

Stable Water Isotopes

Ions =

Noble Gases

Borehole thermometry

Dust

Timescale

Timescale construction

Is there a unified way to report on timescale construction? Should there be? What does a user need to know about the timescale was constructed to make the best use of the data?

Uncertainties

How are uncertainties reported? Do they enable age-modeling software (e.g. GeoChronR) to generate age ensembles ? if not, how do you recommend archiving age ensembles?

Polls

Here are three example polls that the group might want to consider:

For NEW DATASETS:

For LEGACY DATASETS: