West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat driven by Holocene warm water incursions

Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand (), James A. Smith, David A. Hodell, Mervyn Greaves, Christopher R. Poole, Sev Kender, Mark Williams, Thorbjørn Joest Andersen, Patrycja E. Jernas, Henry Elderfield, Johann P. Klages, Stephen J. Roberts, Karsten Gohl, Robert D. Larter and Gerhard Kuhn
Additional contact information
Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross
James A. Smith: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross
David A. Hodell: Cambridge University
Mervyn Greaves: Cambridge University
Christopher R. Poole: University of Leicester
Sev Kender: Camborne School of Mines
Mark Williams: University of Leicester
Thorbjørn Joest Andersen: Center for Permafrost (CENPERM), University of Copenhagen
Patrycja E. Jernas: University of Tromsø — The Arctic University of Norway
Henry Elderfield: Cambridge University
Johann P. Klages: Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
Stephen J. Roberts: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross
Karsten Gohl: Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung
Robert D. Larter: British Antarctic Survey, High Cross
Gerhard Kuhn: Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung

Nature, 2017, vol. 547, issue 7661, 43-48

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22995 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:547:y:2017:i:7661:d:10.1038_nature22995

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature22995

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().