DOI: 10.25921/s4ze-ve52
title: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - SISAL Global Speleothem Isotope Database v2

description: Characterizing the temporal uncertainty in palaeoclimate records is crucial for analysing past climate change, correlating climate events between records, assessing climate periodicities, identifying potential triggers and evaluating climate model simulations. The first global compilation of speleothem isotope records by the SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and Analysis) working group showed that age model uncertainties are not systematically reported in the published literature, and these are only available for a limited number of records (ca. 15%, n=107/691). To improve the usefulness of the SISAL database, we have (i) improved the database's spatio-temporal coverage and (ii) created new chronologies using seven different approaches for age-depth modelling. We have applied these alternative chronologies to the records from the first version of the SISAL database (SISALv1) and to new records compiled since the release of SISALv1. This paper documents the necessary changes in the structure of the SISAL database to accommodate the inclusion of the new age models and their uncertainties as well as the expansion of the database to include new records and the quality-control measures applied. This paper also documents the age-depth model approaches used to calculate the new chronologies. The updated version of the SISAL database (SISALv2) contains isotopic data from 691 speleothem records from 294 cave sites and new age-depth models, including age-depth temporal uncertainties for 512 speleothems. SISALv2 is available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.256 (Comas-Bru et al., 2020a).
description: Stable isotope records from speleothems provide information on past climate changes, most particularly information that can be used to reconstruct past changes in precipitation and atmospheric circulation. SISAL (Speleothem Isotope Synthesis and Analysis) is an international working group of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) project. The working group aims to provide a comprehensive compilation of speleothem isotope records for climate reconstruction and model evaluation. The second version of the SISAL database contains oxygen and carbon isotope measurements from 673 individual speleothem records, and 18 composites from 293 cave systems worldwide, and metadata describing the cave settings and age models of these records. This version also contains 2,138 alternative age-depth models constructed for 503 SISAL entities. 

Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis (SISAL) Database Version 2 (July 2020). The compiled data (in csv and mysql format) as well as a set of scripts to access the database is available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.256  In order to assure traceability, any presentation, report, or publication that uses the SISALv2 database should cite Atsawawaranunt et al. (2018; https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-1687-2018), Comas-Bru et al. (2019; https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1557-2019) and Comas-Bru et al. (2020; https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2579-2020). If using individual sites, the literature citations for published work provided in the database should also be cited. Contact information of data contributors of unpublished data is also provided and these should be contacted when unpublished records are used on an individual basis