Early Holocene retreat of the George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula
- 1Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
- 2British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
- 3Institute of Geography, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK
- 4British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
- 5Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK, and British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
- 6Natural Environment Research Council Isotope Geosciences Laboratory, British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK, and School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
- 7Natural Environment Research Council Radiocarbon Laboratory, Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride, Glasgow G75 OQF, UK
Abstract
The recent collapse of several Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves has been linked to rapid regional atmospheric warming during the twentieth century. New high-resolution lake sediment records of Holocene ice-shelf behavior show that the George VI Ice Shelf was absent beginning ca. 9595 calibrated (cal.) yr B.P., but reformed by ca. 7945 cal. yr B.P. This retreat immediately followed a period of maximum Holocene warmth that is recorded in some ice cores and occurred at the same time as an influx of warmer ocean water onto the Antarctic Peninsula shelf. The absence of the ice shelf suggests that early Holocene ocean-atmosphere variability in the Antarctic Peninsula was greater than that measured in recent decades.
Footnotes
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↵*These authors contributed equally to this work
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↵GSA Data Repository item 2005032, Table DR1, radiocarbon dates from the ML and MLNB cores, is available online at www.geosociety.org/pubs/ft2005.htm, or on request from editinggeosociety.org or Documents Secretary, GSA, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA.
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- Accepted 11 November 2004.
- Received 22 September 2004.
- Revision received 9 November 2004.
- Geological Society of America
