The mixing ratio and bulk isotopic composition of nitrous oxide (N2O) was measured after wet extraction and purification of the air enclosed in 150 g ice core samples from EDC, EDML, Vostok, TALDICE, and NGRIP, following the analysis procedure described in Schmitt et al. (2014). The position-specific isotopic composition of N2O was measured after dry extraction and purification of the air enclosed in 600 g ice core samples from Vostok and Taylor Glacier, following the analysis procedure described in Menking et al. (2025). The mixing ratio and isotopic composition of in situ N2O – i.e., the fraction of N2O produced in the ice – was calculated using a mass balance approach (Soussaintjean et al., preprint). After gas extraction, the sample meltwater and ice chips were collected to measure the isotopic composition of nitrate (NO3-) following the bacterial denitrification method described in Erbland et al. (2013). Each sample was associated with its ice age and gas age based on the AICC2023 chronology (Bouchet et al., 2023) for EDC, EDML, Vostok, TALDICE, and NGRIP and Baggenstos et al. (2017, 2018) for Talyor Glacier. The samples cover the periods 11 – 26 ka, 41 – 75 ka, and 136 – 143 ka. Taylor Glacier is a horizontal core, meaning the age of the ice varies with distance along a transect close to the surface where the horizontal stratigraphy is preserved (Baggenstos et al., 2017).
We present the new reference chronology (AICC2023) providing an age vs depth relationship covering the last 800 kyr (thousands of years) for five ice cores (EDC, EDML, NGRIP, TALDICE and Vostok). To construct the new AICC2023 chronology, we used new highly resolved measurements for EDC ice core as well as novel absolute 81Kr ages, stratigraphic links between the five ice cores and accurate firn modeling estimates. The new chronological and glaciological information were combined in the Bayesian dating tool Paleochrono to obtain the AICC2023 timescale.