Krypton-85 datasets of the northern and southern hemisphere collected over the past 60 years

Arne Kersting; Clemens Schlosser; Sabine Schmid; Martina Konrad; Andreas Bollhöfer; Karen Barry; Axel Suckow

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2020.106522

Krypton-85 datasets of the northern and southern hemisphere collected over the past 60 years

Data Brief. 2020 Nov 13:33:106522. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2020.106522. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Authors

Arne Kersting¹, Clemens Schlosser², Sabine Schmid², Martina Konrad², Andreas Bollhöfer², Karen Barry³, Axel Suckow³

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
² Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz, Rosastr. 9, 79098 Freiburg, Germany.
³ CSIRO Land & Water, Gate 5 Waite Road, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia.

Abstract

With a half-life of 10.7 years, the noble gas radioisotope ⁸⁵Kr is perfectly suited as a tracer to date ice and water that formed during the past half century. Furthermore, due to its inhomogeneous input into the atmosphere, it is a useful tool to investigate atmospheric circulation and back-trajectory analysis. The data presented here represent a comprehensive time series of atmospheric ⁸⁵Kr activity concentrations in ground level air that can be used to model northern and southern hemispheric input functions, which is essential to apply ⁸⁵Kr as a dating tracer. The collection comprises 11 datasets from 4 monitoring stations in the northern and 7 monitoring stations in the southern hemisphere, respectively. In total, it contains about 8000 measurements performed over the past 60 years, making it the largest published ⁸⁵Kr record.

Keywords: Dating; Monitoring; Noble gas radionuclides; Tracer; krypton-85.