Historical porosity data in polar firn

<p>In the 1990s, closed and open porosity volumes of firn samples were measured by J.-M. Barnola using the technique of gas pycnometry, on firn from three different polar sites. They are the basis of a parameterization of closed porosity in polar firn, first introduced in <span class="...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: K. Fourteau, L. Arnaud, X. Faïn, P. Martinerie, D. M. Etheridge, V. Lipenkov, J.-M. Barnola
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2020-05-01
Series:Earth System Science Data
Online Access:https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/12/1171/2020/essd-12-1171-2020.pdf
Description
Summary:<p>In the 1990s, closed and open porosity volumes of firn samples were measured by J.-M. Barnola using the technique of gas pycnometry, on firn from three different polar sites. They are the basis of a parameterization of closed porosity in polar firn, first introduced in <span class="cit" id="xref_text.1"><a href="#bib1.bibx8">Goujon et al.</a> (<a href="#bib1.bibx8">2003</a>)</span> and used in several firn physics models <span class="cit" id="xref_paren.2">(e.g., <a href="#bib1.bibx3">Buizert et al.</a>, <a href="#bib1.bibx3">2012</a>)</span>. However, these data and their processing have not been published in their own right yet. In this short article, we detail how they were processed by J.-M. Barnola and how the closed porosity parameterization was obtained. We show that the original data processing only partially accounts for the presence of reopened bubbles in the samples. Since the proper correction to apply for this effect is hard to estimate, we also processed the data without including a correction for reopened bubbles. Finally, we made these pycnometry data available in order to be used by the glaciology community, notably for the study of polar ice formation and of the composition of gas records in ice cores. They are hosted on the PANGAEA database: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.907678">https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.907678</a> <span class="cit" id="xref_paren.3">(<a href="#bib1.bibx6">Fourteau et al.</a>, <a href="#bib1.bibx6">2019</a><a href="#bib1.bibx6">a</a>)</span>.</p>
ISSN:1866-3508
1866-3516