Excerpt from the letter to R.G. Barry from A.Tarusov,
provided with the original data diskette, December 1988:

"This is the diskette containing the part of our ice core
data from Svalbard.  You can read these files using IBM PC
and any simple software like OmniEdit.  File named A87CHEM
contains chemical data, two others -- stratigraphic data that
is very useful in glaciers with strong summer melting.

All ice in such glaciers can be divided in two types: white
bubble-rich ice originated from firn, and so-called infiltration
ice created while refreezing of the meltwater in form of
horizontal layers.  The latter is good climatic indicator,
being connected with mean summer temperature by cubic relationship.
The infiltration ice layers are usually concentrated in the 
lower part of the annual layer, giving us the possibility to
determine annual boundaries (see file PL82ST -- this method used
for annual stratification from 1656 A.D.)"

Climatology Department
Institute of Geography
Staromonetny 29
109017 Moscow, USSR