Since the late 1970’s the Antarctic Peninsula has been subject to rapid warming, with the majority of its outlet glaciers receding. In order to understand these changes and the driving forces behind them, we reconstruct past glacial response to climatic and oceanic events during the Holocene through sedimentary, geochemical and biological analyses of sediments collected offshore Antarctica. We utilize grain size, carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and diatom microfossils as proxies of ocean productivity and climate change over the last 12,000 years. Integrating these proxies enables us to understand how glaciers have responded to climate and ocean variations in the past and improve predictions of future changes in the glacial landscape.
Paleoclimatic and Paleoceanographic changes in the Antarctic Peninsula
