Water stable isotopes in central Antarctic ice cores are critical to quantify past temperature changes. Accurate temperature reconstructions require one to understand the processes controlling surface snow isotopic composition. Isotopic fractionation processes occurring in the atmosphere and controlling snowfall isotopic composition are well understood theoretically and implemented in atmospheric models. However, post-deposition processes are poorly documented and understood. To quantitatively interpret the isotopic composition of water archived in ice cores, it is thus essential to study the continuum between surface water vapour, precipitation, surface snow and buried snow. Here, we target the isotopic composition of water vapour at Concordia Station, where the oldest EPICA Dome C ice cores have been retrieved. While snowfall and surface snow sampling is routinely performed, accurate measurements of surface water vapour are challenging in such cold and dry conditions. New developments in infrared spectroscopy enable now the measurement of isotopic composition in water vapour traces. Two infrared spectrometers have been deployed at Concordia, allowing continuous, in situ measurements for 1 month in December 2014–January 2015. Comparison of the results from infrared spectroscopy with laboratory measurements of discrete samples trapped using cryogenic sampling validates the relevance of the method to measure isotopic composition in dry conditions. We observe very large diurnal cycles in isotopic composition well correlated with temperature diurnal cycles. Identification of different behaviours of isotopic composition in the water vapour associated with turbulent or stratified regime indicates a strong impact of meteorological processes in local vapour/snow interaction. Even if the vapour isotopic composition seems to be, at least part of the time, at equilibrium with the local snow, the slope of δD against δ¹⁸O prevents us from identifying a unique origin leading to this isotopic composition.

The room temperature self- and foreign-continua of water vapor have been measured near 4250 cm⁻¹ with a newly developed high sensitivity cavity ring down spectrometer (CRDS). The typical sensitivity of the recordings is α_min ≈ 6 × 10⁻¹⁰ cm⁻¹ which is two orders of magnitude better than previous Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) measurements in the spectral region. The investigated spectral interval is located in the low energy range of the important 2.1 μm atmospheric transparency window. Self-continuum cross-sections, C_S, were retrieved from the quadratic dependence of the spectrum base line level measured for different water vapor pressures between 0 and 15 Torr, after subtraction of the local water monomer lines contribution calculated using HITRAN2012 line parameters. The C_S values were determined with 5% accuracy for four spectral points between 4249.2 and 4257.3 cm⁻¹. Their values of about 3.2 × 10⁻²³ cm² molecule⁻¹ atm⁻¹ are found 20% higher than predicted by the MT_CKD V2.5 model but two times weaker than reported in the literature using FTS. The foreign-continuum was evaluated by injecting various amounts of synthetic air in the CRDS cell while keeping the initial water vapor partial pressure constant. The foreign-continuum cross-section, C_F, was retrieved from a linear fit of the spectrum base line level versus the air pressure. The obtained C_F values are larger by a factor of 4.5 compared to the MT_CKD values and smaller by a factor of 1.7 compared to previous FTS values. As a result, for an atmosphere at room temperature with 60% relative humidity, the foreign-continuum contribution to the water continuum near 4250 cm⁻¹ is found to be on the same order as the self-continuum contribution.