Reversible ice sheet thinning in the Amundsen Sea Embayment during the Late Holocene

• Main Authors: Balco, Greg, Brown, Nathan, Nichols, Keir, Venturelli, Ryan A., Adams, Jonathan, Braddock, Scott, Campbell, Seth, Goehring, Brent, Johnson, Joanne S., Rood, Dylan H., Wilcken, Klaus, Hall, Brenda, Woodward, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Amundsen Sea; Antarctic; West Antarctic Ice Sheet; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2022-172; https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2022-172/

Cosmogenic-nuclide concentrations in subglacial bedrock cores show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) at a site between Thwaites and Pope Glaciers was at least 35 m thinner than present in the past several thousand years, and subsequently thickened. This is important because of concern that present thinning and grounding line retreat at these and nearby glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment may be irreversible, potentially leading to decimeter- to meter-scale sea level rise within decades to centuries. A past episode of ice sheet thinning, which took place in a similar although not identical climate, was not irreversible. We propose that the past thinning-thickening cycle was due to a glacioisostatic rebound feedback, similar to that invoked as a possible stabilizing mechanism for current grounding line retreat, in which isostatic uplift caused by early Holocene thinning led to relative sea level fall favoring grounding line advance.