Antarctic marine ice sheet retreat in the Ross Sea during the early Holocene

Abstract:

Geological constraints on the timing of the retreat of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) Antarctic Ice Sheets provide critical insights into the processes controlling marine-based ice sheet stability. The over-deepened, seaward shallowing bathymetry of Antarctica’s continental shelves is ideally configured to promote past, and potentially future, marine ice-sheet instability. The retreat history of the LGM ice sheet in the Ross Sea region is primarily constrained by C-14 ages on coastal beach ridges and relict penguin colonies along the Transantarctic Mountain front in the Western Ross Sea. Although these terrestrial sites offer more reliable dates than imprecise C-14 chronologies derived from bulk marine sediments, they may reflect retreat of local piedmont glaciers derived from East Antarctic outlet glaciers rather than representing the timing of retreat of the ice sheet in the central Ross Embayment. We present a sedimentary facies succession and foraminifera-based C-14 chronology from a core collected beneath the Ross Ice Shelf via a hot water drill access hole used for the ANDRILL Coulman High site survey. The site is to the east of Ross Island and distal from the coast, and yields a minimum age for glacial retreat that is approximately 1000 yrs earlier than suggested by coastal records along the nearby Victoria Land coast. We examine the implications of this constraint on the timing of ice sheet retreat in the context of model simulations and new multi-beam bathymetry data acquired in the Western Ross Sea. On the basis of these data we hypothesize that marine-based ice sheet retreat was triggered by oceanic forcings along most of the Pacific Ocean coastline of Antarctica simultaneously, but continued retreat in the Ross Sea occurred primarily as a consequence of marine ice sheet instability.