Reconstructing the History of the Antarctic Ice Sheet: Clues from the past for the future
Polar ice is an important component of the modern climate system, affecting – among others - global sea level, ocean circulation and heat transport. Today most of the Antarctic continent, an area more than fifty times bigger than the UK, is covered by up to four kilometres of ice. Geologically speaking, this Antarctic ice cap is a relatively young phenomenon. It only developed ~34 million years ago. From marine sediments and terrestrial plants we know that this was the time when Earth climate transitioned from a largely ice-free ‘Greenhouse world’ to the present ‘Icehouse world’ with ice caps on both poles. Hence we have 34 million years worth of earth history to study the behaviour of the Antarctic ice sheet under different climatic conditions. Based on the projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the Earth’s surface could warm by 3 °C or moreby the end of the century, a condition that last existed in the early Pliocene (4.5 - 3.0 million years ago). Estimated early Pliocene sea level high stands of up to 40 metres would not only require the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to melt, but also parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet. Wouldn’t we expect to see the footprint of such ice instability in the marine sediments around Antarctica?
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Speaker
Tina van der Flierdt
Biography
Tina van de Flierdt holds a lectureship in Isotope Geochemistry at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. She is a geologist by training whose academic background also includes a PhD in Natural Sciences from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (New York). She has more than 10 years of experience in isotope geochemistry and co-leads the MAGIC isotope facility at Imperial College London. Her research spans a variety of fields from understanding chemical cycles of trace elements in the ocean, over past ocean circulation patterns and climate, to the evolution and erosion of continental crust. Over recent years she developed a particular interest in the Antarctic ice sheets, and their vulnerability to future climate change.
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