The datasets provide neodymium and strontium isotope composition of Pliocene detrital sediments and additional regional core top samples, diatom species counts and biogenic opal content. These data related to Pliocene marine sediments recovered offshore of Adelie Land, East Antarctica from IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) Site 318-U1361. The data reveal dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the vicinity of the low-lying Wilkes Subglacial Basin during times of past climatic warmth. Sedimentary sequences deposited between 5.3 and 3.3 million years ago indicate increases in Southern Ocean surface water productivity, associated with elevated circum Antarctic temperatures. The geochemical provenance of detrital material deposited during these warm intervals suggests active erosion of continental bedrock from within the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, an area today buried beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. This erosion is interpreted to be associated with retreat of the ice sheet margin several hundreds of kilometres inland and concludes that the East Antarctic ice sheet was sensitive to climatic warmth during the Pliocene.

These data files contain the records of isotopes, anions, cations and organic compounds measured in the Bouvet Island ice core. The Bouvet ice core was collected as part of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE) 2016-2017, and is the first ever ice core collected on the island. All analyses was carried out at the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United Kingdom between 2016 and 2018. Analyses were carried out by analytical staff and a PhD student. Isotopes were measured using a Picarro instrument, anions and cations on a Dionex Intergrion Ion Chromatograph, and organics using High-Performance Liquid Chromotography Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Isotopes, anions and cations are measured as discreet 5cm core samples, while organics are measured at annual resolution core samples. This data forms part of a suite of ice cores from the sub-Antarctic islands collected on the ACE cruise 2016-2017, for which anion, cation and isotope data will be made available separately. Funding source Work by Amy King was jointly supported by Selwyn College, Cambridge, and the NERC Doctoral Training Programme [grant number NE/L002507/1]. ACE and Elizabeth Thomas received funding from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the Swiss Polar Institute, and Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. Joel Pedro acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the European Community''s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007e2013)/ERC grant agreement 610055 as part of the ice2ice project.