Genomic evidence for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial

The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered vulnerable to irreversible collapse under future climate trajectories, and its tipping point may lie within the mitigated warming scenarios of 1.5° to 2°C of the United Nations Paris Agreement. Knowledge of ice loss during similarly warm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science
Main Authors: Lau, Sally CY, Wilson, Nerida G, Golledge, Nicholas R, Naish, Tim R, Watts, Phillip C, Silva, Catarina NS, Cooke, Ira R, Allcock, A Louise, Mark, Felix C, Linse, Katrin, Strugnell, Jan M
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2023
Subjects:
Antarctic
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Antarc*
Antarctic Octopus
Ice Sheet
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/58369/
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/58369/1/science.ade0664%281%29.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade0664
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.e4dbdb31-506b-481a-bcf5-3faf1fdb5b58
Description
Summary:The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered vulnerable to irreversible collapse under future climate trajectories, and its tipping point may lie within the mitigated warming scenarios of 1.5° to 2°C of the United Nations Paris Agreement. Knowledge of ice loss during similarly warm past climates could resolve this uncertainty, including the Last Interglacial when global sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today and global average temperatures were 0.5° to 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial levels. Using a panel of genome-wide, single-nucleotide polymorphisms of a circum-Antarctic octopus, we show persistent, historic signals of gene flow only possible with complete WAIS collapse. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that the tipping point of WAIS loss could be reached even under stringent climate mitigation scenarios.

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