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The Antarctic research season has begun 15 December, when researchers in the international research project MAGIC-DML returned to Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica to investigate how ice sheet volume has changed.
In the Eastern Antarctic, scientists are taking samples from the so-called nunataks. The team is now in Dronning Maud Land for the second time after an expedition in February 2017.
Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica is almost entirely covered by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Even though a reduction in ice sheet volume since the last ice age has been confirmed here, it is one of the least studied areas in Antarctica.
Underneath the ice sheet is a landscape composed of hills, valleys, mountains, and planes, similar to landscapes on other continents. When the ice sheet shrinks, this landscape becomes gradually exposed and the first parts of the landscape to emerge from the ice are the summits of the highest mountains, known as nunataks.
Nunataks contain a wealth of information that can show how thick the ice sheet was during various periods of the past when global climate was colder than present and how much it has thinned until today. Nunataks also reveal unique information on the fluctuations of the ice surface during past warm periods, such as the mid-Pliocene warm interval dated back to about 3 million years ago.
During this remote period of globally warmer climate inland parts of the East Antarctic ice sheet received more snowfall and were thicker than today. Such information is especially important in the light of the ongoing climate change and its potential impacts on the East Antarctic ice sheet and the global sea level.
"Understanding how the ice has thinned is very important in order to understand how the entire ice sheet might change in the long run. We know very little about this when it comes to Dronning Maud Land," says Arjen Stroeven, Professor in Physical Geography at Stockholm University, and Principal Investigator of the project.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 24 2017, @11:41PM
Yeah, we're far too awesome.