RECONSTRUCTING ICE SHEET SURFACE CHANGES IN WESTERN DRONNING MAUD LAND, ANTARCTICA

• Main Author: Jennifer C H Newall
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Geology not elsewhere classified; Geomorphology and earth surface processes; Glaciology; Quaternary environments; Physical geography and environmental geoscience not elsewhere classified; Other earth sciences not elsewhere classified; Glacial geomorphology; ANTARCTICA; East Antarctic Ice Sheet; Nunatak; nunataks; Dronning Maud Land; geomorphological mapping; Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified; Geology; Geomorphology and Regolith and Landscape Evolution; Physical Geography; Surface Processes; Antarctic; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; DML; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.25394/pgs.14512074.v1

Understanding climate-driven changes in global land-based ice volume is a critical component in our capability to predict how global sea level will rise as a consequence of the current human-driven climate change. At the last glacial maximum (LGM, which peaked around 20 ka), ephemeral ice sheets covered vast regions of the northern hemisphere while both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were more extensive than at present. As global temperatures rose at the transition into the Holocene, driving the LGM deglaciation, eustatic sea level rose by approximately 125 m. The east Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS) is the largest ice sheet on Earth today, holding an ice volume equivalent to ca. 53 m rise in global sea level. Considering current trends in global climate, specifically rapidly increasing atmospheric CO 2 levels and global temperature, it is important to improve our understanding of how the EAIS will respond to global warming so that we can make better predictions of future sea level changes to guide community adaptation and planning efforts. Numerical ice sheet models which inform projections of future ice volume changes, and can, therefore, yield projections of sea level rise, rely on empirical data to test their ability to accurately represent former and present ice configurations. However, there is a general lack of data on the paleoglaciology of the EAIS along the western Dronning Maud Land (DML) margin. In order to address this situation, the paleoglaciology of western DML forms the focus of the work presented in this thesis. Together with collaborators within the MAGIC-DML consortium (Mapping, Measuring and Modelling Antarctic Geomorphology and Ice Change in Dronning Maud Land) that provides the funding for this MS project, the author has performed geomorphological mapping across western DML; an area of approximately 200,000 km 2 . The results of the mapping presented in this thesis will provide the basis for a detailed glacial reconstruction of the region. The geomorphological mapping was completed ...