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Relative sea-level data preclude major late Holocene ice-mass change in Pine Island Bay

Braddock, Scott; Hall, Brenda L.; Johnson, Joanne S.; Balco, Greg; Spoth, Meghan; Whitehouse, Pippa L.; Campbell, Seth; Goehring, Brent M.; Rood, Dylan H.; Woodward, John

Relative sea-level data preclude major late Holocene ice-mass change in Pine Island Bay Thumbnail


Authors

Scott Braddock

Brenda L. Hall

Joanne S. Johnson

Greg Balco

Meghan Spoth

Seth Campbell

Brent M. Goehring

Dylan H. Rood

John Woodward



Abstract

The rapidly retreating Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers together dominate present-day ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and are implicated in runaway deglaciation scenarios. Knowledge of whether these glaciers were substantially smaller in the mid-Holocene and subsequently recovered to their present extents is important for assessing whether current ice recession is irreversible. Here we reconstruct relative sea-level change from radiocarbon-dated raised beaches at sites immediately seawards of these glaciers, allowing us to examine the response of the earth to loading and unloading of ice in the Amundsen Sea region. We find that relative sea level fell steadily over the past 5.5 kyr without rate changes that would characterize large-scale ice re-expansion. Moreover, current bedrock uplift rates are an order of magnitude greater than the rate of long-term relative sea-level fall, suggesting a change in regional crustal unloading and implying that the present deglaciation may be unprecedented in the past ~5.5 kyr. While we cannot preclude minor grounding-line fluctuations, our data are explained most easily by early Holocene deglaciation followed by relatively stable ice positions until recent times and imply that Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers have not been substantially smaller than present during the past 5.5 kyr.

Citation

Braddock, S., Hall, B. L., Johnson, J. S., Balco, G., Spoth, M., Whitehouse, P. L., …Woodward, J. (2022). Relative sea-level data preclude major late Holocene ice-mass change in Pine Island Bay. Nature Geoscience, 15(7), 568-572. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00961-y

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 4, 2022
Online Publication Date Jun 9, 2022
Publication Date 2022-07
Deposit Date Jun 10, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jun 10, 2022
Journal Nature Geoscience
Print ISSN 1752-0894
Electronic ISSN 1752-0908
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 7
Pages 568-572
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00961-y

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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