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

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.