Southern Ocean marine sediment core sea-ice records for the last 150,000 years

Antarctic sea ice forms a critical part of the Southern Ocean and global climate system. The behaviour of Antarctic sea ice throughout the last glacial-interglacial (G-IG) cycle (12,000-130,000 years) allows us to investigate the interactions between sea ice and climate under a large range of mean climate states. Understanding both temporal and spatial variations in Antarctic sea ice across a G-IG cycle is crucial to better understanding the G-IG regulation of atmospheric CO2, ocean circulation, nutrient cycling and productivity. Published qualitative and quantitative records of G-IG sea-ice, which cover at least 30,000 of the last 150,000 years, are compiled from twenty four marine sediment cores. All records include the combined relative abundances of the two sea-ice related diatoms Fragilariopsis curta and F. cylindrus (FCC). The FCC proxy is a qualitative indicator of winter sea-ice presence (Gersonde and Zielinski, 2000). Fourteen of the core records also have quantitative reconstructions of winter sea-ice concentrations (WSIC) and/or sea-ice duration (SID). These quantitative reconstructions were produced by applying a modern analog technique transfer function (Crosta et al., 1998; Esper & Gersonde 2014) to the preserved diatom species assemblages.