NOAA NCEI World Data Service for Paleoclimatology (data by Bereiter et al., University of Bern and partners)

Antarctic ice cores revised 800,000-year CO2 composite

Atmospheric CO2 (ppm, with one-sigma uncertainty) from air trapped in Antarctic ice, stitched together from Law Dome, Dome C, WAIS Divide, Siple Dome, Talos Dome, EPICA Dronning Maud Land and Vostok, from 805,669 years before 1950 to 2001. Gas age is in years before 1950 (AD = 1950 - age); the most recent 1,800 years come from Law Dome (Rubino et al. 2013). Ice-core air is smoothed over decades to centuries, so brief spikes would not show. Replaces the Luthi et al. (2008) composite. Static: no updates expected.

Free to reuse with creditarchivedUS federal programmeFetched automatically

Numbers published from it

Licence and credit

Licence: No licence stated; free use with citation (NOAA NCEI World Data Service for Paleoclimatology)
What the terms say: “Please cite original publication, NOAA Landing Page URL, dataset and publication DOIs (where available), and date accessed when using downloaded data.”
From the producer's terms, checked 2026-10-04; re-checked automatically every week.
Credit we give: Bereiter et al. (2015), Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1002/2014GL061957; data: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology, Antarctic Ice Cores Revised 800KYr CO2 Data, doi:10.25921/n8y4-bp27, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/17975, accessed {date_accessed}.
Copy of the raw file: Allowed: we keep a public copy of every version we use.
Cite as: Bereiter, B.; Eggleston, S.; Schmitt, J.; Nehrbass-Ahles, C.; Stocker, T.F.; Fischer, H.; Kipfstuhl, S.; Chappellaz, J.A. (2015-02-04): NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Antarctic Ice Cores Revised 800KYr CO2 Data. Antarctic Ice Core Revised Composite CO2 Data. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/n8y4-bp27. Accessed {date_accessed}. Bereiter, B., S. Eggleston, J. Schmitt, C. Nehrbass-Ahles, T. F. Stocker, H. Fischer, S. Kipfstuhl, J. Chappellaz. 2015. Revision of the EPICA Dome C CO2 record from 800 to 600 kyr before present. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(2), 542-549. doi: 10.1002/2014GL061957. Lüthi, D., M. Le Floch, B. Bereiter, T. Blunier, J.-M. Barnola, U. Siegenthaler, D. Raynaud, J. Jouzel, H. Fischer, K. Kawamura, and T.F. Stocker. 2008. High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, 453, 379-382. doi: 10.1038/nature06949

Files

NOAA template v4 text file: '#' header lines, then tab-separated columns age_gas_calBP (years before 1950), co2_ppm and co2_1s_ppm (one-sigma uncertainty), 1,901 rows.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/antarctica2015co2composite-noaa.txt

Status

Programme: Final dataset, contributed 4 February 2015; NCEI revised only the file header (16 August 2024). NCEI is a NOAA office, so the hosting is exposed to US federal budget cuts; keep the snapshot.
Updates: Static (final dataset; no updates expected)
Last check: Unchanged since the last fetch (2026-10-05T11:02:19Z)