The geochemical and mineralogical fingerprint of West Antarctica's weak underbelly: Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers

• Published in: Chemical Geology
• Main Authors: Pereira, Patric Simões, van de Flierdt, Tina, Hemming, Sidney R., Frederichs, Thomas, Hammond, Samantha J., Brachfeld, Stefanie, Doherty, Cathleen, Kuhn, Gerhard, Smith, James A., Klages, Johann P., Hillenbrand, Claus-Dieter
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2020
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Amundsen Sea; West Antarctic Ice Sheet; Pine Island Glacier; Island Bay; Pine Island Bay; Thwaites Glacier; Antarc*; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/527660/; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009254120301881

The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered the most unstable part of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, with particular vulnerability in the Amundsen Sea sector where glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. Far-field sea-level data and ice-sheet models have pointed towards at least one major WAIS disintegration during the Late Quaternary, but direct evidence for past collapse(s) from ice-proximal geological archives remains elusive. In order to facilitate geochemical and mineralogical tracing of the two most important glaciers draining into the Amundsen Sea, i.e. Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and Thwaites Glacier (TG), we here provide the first multi-proxy provenance analysis of 26 seafloor surface sediment samples from Pine Island Bay.