Presented are analytical data from lacustrine sediment cores, retrieved from Lake Nam Co (Tibetan Plateau). The sediment core is a composite of one gravity core, taken with a Rumohr-Meischner gravity corer (63 mm diameter) and a piston core, retrieved using an uwitec piston coring system (http://www.uwitec.at; 90 mm diameter). The composite core labelled comprises a total length of 10.378 m. The cores were obtained at N 30.737417, E 090.790333 at a water depth of 93 m on 2008-09-15. The purpose of obtaining this sediment core was to establish a high-resolution record of climate (monsoonal) and environmental change using multiple proxy data. The dataset comprises analytical data based on sedimentological, inorganic geochemical, mineralogical and isotope-geochemical methods. Specifically: sediment water content & density; magnetic susceptibility; particel size data; quantitative inorganic geochemical data (ICP-OES aqua regia and HCL digestions); semi-quantitative XRF elemental data; carbon, nitrogen, sulfur contents; qualitative mineralogical data; bulk sediment stable carbon and oxygen isotope data.

The magnetic susceptibility of the sediments was measures during October and November 2008 using a MS2E surface scanning sensor (Bartington Instruments Ltd., Witney, UK). Sediment core halves were covered using commercial plastic wrap. Measurement interval was 2 mm, with three measurements at each interval point. After each 10th measurement, the magnetic susceptibility signal of the surrounding air was measured to calculate a potential temperature (air) drift of the sensor. This correction was finally done by linear interpolation between the air measurements and subtracting this result from the continuous sediment values.