Directory

Start date:
January 2016
End date:
January 2016
Locations:
Mawson Glacier, Mount Gauss, Mount Murray, Trinity Nunatak, Battlements Nunantak, Jarina Nunatak
Principle Investigator:
Professor Richard Levy
Organisation:
GNS Science
The overall goal of this work is to understand the retreat of Antarctic ice sheets during the last deglaciation (20,000 years ago to present). During this period the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets receded from advanced positions at the continental shelf margin to the present-day ice sheet configuration. We do not currently know when the ice sheet started to retreat, whether this retreat was gradual or episodic, and when it stopped. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has been suggested by Clark et al. (2009) as one of the possible sources of Meltwater Pulse 1a, a 10-20 m sea level rise which occurred between 15-14,000 years ago. Work to date in East Antarctica (e.g. Mackintosh et al., 2011) does not support this view. We aim to use exposure age dating to help test the hypothesis that Antarctica was the source of this meltwater pulse.