West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat driven by Holocene warm water incursions

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record. Glaciological and oceanographic observations coupled with numerical models show that warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) incursions onto the West Antarctic continental shelf cause me...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature
Main Authors: Hillenbrand, C-D, Smith, JA, Hodell, DA, Greaves, M, Poole, CR, Kender, S, Williams, M, Andersen, TJ, Jernas, PE, Elderfield, H, Klages, JP, Roberts, SJ, Gohl, K, Larter, RD, Kuhn, G
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Springer Nature 2017
Subjects:
Antarctic Regions
Foraminifera
Freezing
Geologic Sediments
Global Warming
History
19th Century
20th Century
21st Century
Ancient
Hot Temperature
Ice Cover
Models
Theoretical
Oceans and Seas
Reproducibility of Results
Seawater
Wind
Amundsen Sea
Antarc*
Antarctic
British Antarctic Survey
Ice Sheet
Ice Shelf
Ice Shelves
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10871/30490
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22995
Description
Summary:This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record. Glaciological and oceanographic observations coupled with numerical models show that warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) incursions onto the West Antarctic continental shelf cause melting of the undersides of floating ice shelves. Because these ice shelves buttress glaciers feeding into them, their ocean-induced thinning is driving Antarctic ice-sheet retreat today. Here we present a multi-proxy data based reconstruction of variability in CDW inflow to the Amundsen Sea sector, the most vulnerable part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, during the Holocene epoch (from 11.7 thousand years ago to the present). The chemical compositions of foraminifer shells and benthic foraminifer assemblages in marine sediments indicate that enhanced CDW upwelling, controlled by the latitudinal position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, forced deglaciation of this sector from at least 10,400 years ago until 7,500 years ago-when an ice-shelf collapse may have caused rapid ice-sheet thinning further upstream-and since the 1940s. These results increase confidence in the predictive capability of current ice-sheet models. This study is part of the Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme of the British Antarctic Survey and the PACES II (Polar Regions and Coasts in the changing Earth System) programme of the Alfred-Wegener-Institut. It was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), NERC grant NE/M013081/1 and the Helmholtz Association. This work was also funded (in part) by The European Research Council (ERC grant 2010-NEWLOG ADG-267931 HE).

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