Initiation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and estimates of total Antarctic ice volume in the earliest Oligocene

Autor: Robert M. DeConto, Douglas S. Wilson, David Pollard, Bruce P. Luyendyk, Stewart S. R. Jamieson
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Zdroj: Geophysical Research Letters. 40:4305-4309
ISSN: 0094-8276
DOI: 10.1002/grl.50797
Popis: [1] Reconstructions of Antarctic paleotopography for the late Eocene suggest that glacial erosion and thermal subsidence have lowered West Antarctic elevations considerably since then, with Antarctic land area having decreased ~20%. A new climate-ice sheet model based on these reconstructions shows that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed at the Eocene-Oligocene transition (33.8–33.5Ma, E-O) in concert with the continental-scale expansion of the East Antarctica Ice Sheet and that the total volume of East and West Antarctic ice (33.4–35.9×10 6 km 3 )w as>1.4 times greater than previously assumed. This larger modeled ice volume is consistent with a modest cooling of 1–2°C in the deep ocean during the E-O transition, lower than other estimates of ~3°C cooling, and suggests the possibility of substantial ice in the Antarctic interior before the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. Citation: Wilson, D. S., D. Pollard, R. M. DeConto, S. S. R. Jamieson, and B. P. Luyendyk (2013), Initiation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and estimates of total Antarctic ice volume in the earliest Oligocene, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, doi:10.1002/ grl.50797.
Databáze: OpenAIRE