As Earth emerged from the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, West Antarctica (pictured) warmed two to three times faster than the rest of the planet.
A team led by Kurt Cuffey at the University of California, Berkeley, measured temperatures along the length of a 3.4-kilometre-deep borehole in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The temperature profile indicates how the ice warmed over time, and provides a more direct measurement than other methods that rely on data from isotopes in ice cores.
The work shows that Antarctica had mostly finished warming by about 15,000 years ago — several thousand years earlier than the Northern Hemisphere. Climate models that show the Antarctic responding late to shifting temperatures can be discarded, the authors say.
Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://doi.org/bt24 (2016)
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Antarctica warmed up fast in the past. Nature 540, 173 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/540173c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/540173c
