Elsevier

Earth-Science Reviews

Volume 104, Issue 4, February 2011, Pages 199-212
Earth-Science Reviews

Post-glacial regional climate variability along the East Antarctic coastal margin—Evidence from shallow marine and coastal terrestrial records

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2010.10.006Get rights and content

Abstract

We review the post-glacial climate variability along the East Antarctic coastline using terrestrial and shallow marine geological records and compare these reconstructions with data from elsewhere. Nearly all East Antarctic records show a near-synchronous Early Holocene climate optimum (11.5–9 ka BP), coinciding with the deglaciation of currently ice-free regions and the optimum recorded in Antarctic ice and marine sediment cores. Shallow marine and coastal terrestrial climate anomalies appear to be out of phase after the Early Holocene warm period, and show complex regional patterns, but an overall trend of cooling in the terrestrial records. A Mid to Late Holocene warm period is present in many East Antarctic lake and shallow coastal marine records. Although there are some differences in the regional timing of this warm period, it typically occurs somewhere between 4.7 and 1 ka BP, which overlaps with a similar optimum found in Antarctic Peninsula terrestrial records. The differences in the timing of these sometimes abrupt warm events in different records and regions points to a number of mechanisms that we have yet to identify. Nearly all records show a neoglacial cooling from 2 ka BP onwards. There is no evidence along the East Antarctic coastline for an equivalent to the Northern Hemisphere Medieval Warm Period and there is only weak circumstantial evidence in a few places for a cool event crudely equivalent in time to the Northern Hemisphere's Little Ice Age. There is a need for well-dated, high resolution climate records in coastal East Antarctica and particularly in Terre Adélie, Dronning Maud Land and Enderby Land to fully understand the regional climate anomalies, the disparity between marine and terrestrial records, and to determine the significance of the heterogeneous temperature trends being measured in the Antarctic today.

Introduction

Recent assessments of temperature change have revealed that warming in West Antarctica (WA) has exceeded 0.1 °C per decade during the past 50 yrs (Steig et al., 2009) and that the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth (Vaughan et al., 2003). East Antarctica (EA) shows regional differences but the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive (Steig et al., 2009). To date little is known about how this pattern of recent warming in Antarctica relates to past natural variability in these regions, despite this being critical for improved prediction of the impact of future climate anomalies on the cryosphere and ecosystems of the continent (Hodgson et al., 2009a). Past climate change reconstructions in Antarctica are largely based on ice cores (e.g. Masson et al., 2000, Mayewski et al., 2009). These records have provided information on, for example, past global atmospheric composition (Petit et al., 1999, Jouzel et al., 2007), and productivity and iron flux in the Southern Ocean over several glacial–interglacial cycles (Wolff et al., 2006). In addition, ice cores have revealed the existence of a bipolar seesaw (Blunier et al., 1998, Broecker, 1998) with warm events being out of phase between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres during glacial periods (e.g. Stocker and Johnsen, 2003, Schneider and Steig, 2008, Barker et al., 2009) and likely also during interglacials (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010a, Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010b). Over the Pleistocene glacial–interglacial cycles, the climate of Antarctica has traditionally been considered to be largely controlled by changes in the Northern Hemisphere and particularly in the North Atlantic region including changes in the strength of deep water formation; yet recent studies have revealed that the Antarctic warming events preceded those in the North (Ahn and Brook, 2008, Mayewski et al., 2009). The mechanisms behind this forcing are still unclear, but a reduction in the stratification of the Southern Ocean and a subsequent release of CO2 (Anderson et al., 2009, Hodgson and Sime et al., 2010) and a decrease in sea ice (Stevens and Keeling, 2000) are proposed as playing a critical role.

During the Holocene, the connection between climate changes in both hemispheres is however less clear both because the amplitude of the changes has been smaller (but see Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010a, Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010b), and because the relative impact of regional driving or amplifying mechanisms has been greater. For example, Holocene glacier dynamics in New Zealand have been reported as neither in phase nor strictly anti-phased with glacier changes in both hemispheres (Schaefer et al., 2009). To better understand the past and present regional differences and the links between the climates of the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the Holocene, there is a clear need for well-dated paleoclimate records, particularly from the high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. Ice cores have some disadvantages in this respect because the more subtle climate anomalies such as those occurring during the Holocene (e.g. Mayewski et al., 2004, Wanner et al., 2008) are generally less well resolved in the records from the high central plateau(Masson et al., 2000, but see Schneider and Steig, 2008). This pattern is due to the small variations in isotopic composition in these inland locations compared with those generally observed at coastal sites (Bromwich et al., 1998, Masson et al., 2000). Near the coast, the recovery of reliable ice cores enabling high resolution reconstructions is in turn difficult, because the ice sheet is often too dynamic. In coastal regions, valuable and often overlooked alternatives are lake sediment cores and shallow marine sediment records (see Hodgson et al., 2004, Hodgson and Smol, 2008 for a review).

Here we aim to synthesise lacustrine and coastal marine records of regional climate and environmental changes along the margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS), including the Ross Sea region (RSR), and compare these observations with existing reviews of changes in the AP region (e.g., Ingólfsson et al., 1998, Hjort et al., 2003, Hodgson et al., 2004, Bentley et al., 2009) and with a variety of Antarctic ice core records (e.g., Masson et al., 2000, Steig et al., 2000, Wolff et al., 2006).

Section snippets

Physical settings of the study area

The most prominent feature of Antarctica is its ice sheet, which covers over 99% of the continent and is made up of three distinct morphological zones, consisting of the EAIS, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and the glaciers of the AP. The Transantarctic Mountains, which run between Victoria Land and the Ronne and Filchner Ice Shelves (Fig. 1), separate the EAIS from the WAIS. The AP extends north from a line between the southern part of the Weddell Sea and a point on the mainland south of

The Pleistocene–Holocene transition

The widespread Antarctic Early Holocene climate optimum between 11.5 and 9 ka BP observed in all ice cores from coastal and continental sites (Masson et al., 2000, Steig et al., 2000; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2004, Masson-Delmotte et al., 2010a, Mayewski et al., 2009), coincided with the onset of biogenic sedimentation in lakes and the occupation of ice-free land by biota between c. 13.5 and 10 ka BP in Princess Elizabeth Land and Mac Robertson Land (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). In the Larsemann Hills,

Synthesis and discussion

Many of the larger currently ice-free regions studied, escaped full glaciation during the LGM, such as the Larsemann Hills (Hodgson et al., 2001, Hodgson et al., 2009b), the Vestfold Hills (Gibson et al., 2009, Colhoun et al., 2010), Amery Oasis (Fink et al., 2006) and the Bunger Hills (Gore et al., 2001) and possibly also some island and peninsula coastlines in Lützow Holm Bay (Miura et al., 1998), whereas other regions were probably completely glaciated and became gradually ice-free after the

Conclusions

Well-dated terrestrial and shallow marine records provide valuable contributions to resolving the magnitude and geographical extent climate changes in EA. Several past climate anomalies appear to be in phase with changes at the higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, whilst others are out of phase (or in anti-phase). There is clear evidence for a nearly Antarctic wide Early Holocene (11.5–9 ka BP) optimum in phase with changes at Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, but out of phase with

Acknowledgements

This work was initiated by the author's contribution to the special SCAR Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment report. EV is a post-doctoral research fellow with the Fund for Scientific research, Flanders (Belgium). DH is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (UK). IT is funded by the Institute for the Promotion of Science and Technology in Flanders (Belgium). DR and AM acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council, MM and BW acknowledge the German

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