Abstract
Warm intervals within the Pliocene epoch (5.33–2.58 million years ago) were characterized by global temperatures comparable to those predicted for the end of this century1 and atmospheric CO2 concentrations similar to today2,3,4. Estimates for global sea level highstands during these times5 imply possible retreat of the East Antarctic ice sheet, but ice-proximal evidence from the Antarctic margin is scarce. Here we present new data from Pliocene marine sediments recovered offshore of Adélie Land, East Antarctica, that reveal dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the vicinity of the low-lying Wilkes Subglacial Basin during times of past climatic warmth. Sedimentary sequences deposited between 5.3 and 3.3 million years ago indicate increases in Southern Ocean surface water productivity, associated with elevated circum-Antarctic temperatures. The geochemical provenance of detrital material deposited during these warm intervals suggests active erosion of continental bedrock from within the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, an area today buried beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. We interpret this erosion to be associated with retreat of the ice sheet margin several hundreds of kilometres inland and conclude that the East Antarctic ice sheet was sensitive to climatic warmth during the Pliocene.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Haywood, A. M. & Valdes, P. J. Modelling Pliocene warmth: Contribution of atmosphere, oceans and cryosphere. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 218, 363–377 (2004).
Seki, O. et al. Alkenone and boron-based Pliocene p CO 2 records. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 292, 201–211 (2010).
Bartoli, G., Honisch, B. & Zeebe, R. E. Atmospheric p CO 2 decline during the Pliocene intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciations. Paleoceanography 26, PA4213 (2011).
Pagani, M., Liu, Z. H., LaRiviere, J. & Ravelo, A. C. High Earth-system climate sensitivity determined from Pliocene carbon dioxide concentrations. Nature Geosci. 3, 27–30 (2010).
Miller, K. G. et al. High tide of the warm Pliocene: Implications of global sea level for Antarctic deglaciation. Geology 40, 407–410 (2012).
Rignot, E., Velicogna, I., van den Broeke, M. R., Monaghan, A. & Lenaerts, J. Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L05503 (2011).
Pritchard, H. D. et al. Antarctic ice-sheet loss driven by basal melting of ice shelves. Nature 484, 502–505 (2012).
Shepherd, A. et al. A reconciled estimate of ice-sheet mass balance. Science 338, 1183–1189 (2012).
Naish, T. R. & Wilson, G. S. Constraints on the amplitude of Mid-Pliocene (3.6-2.4 Ma) eustatic sea-level fluctuations from the New Zealand shallow-marine sediment record. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 367, 169–187 (2009).
Raymo, M. E., Mitrovica, J. X., O’Leary, M. J., DeConto, R. M. & Hearty, P. L. Departures from eustasy in Pliocene sea-level records. Nature Geosci. 4, 328–332 (2011).
Lythe, M. B., Vaughan, D. G. & Consortium, B. BEDMAP: A new ice thickness and subglacial topographic model of Antarctica. J. Geophys. Res. 106, 11335–11351 (2001).
Hill, D. J., Haywood, A. M., Hindmarsh, R. C. A. & Valdes, P. J. in Deep Time Perspectives on Climate Change (eds Williams, M., Haywood, A.M., Gregory, J. & Schmidt, D.) 517–538 (The Micropalaeontological Society/The Geological Society of London, 2007).
Dolan, A. M. et al. Sensitivity of Pliocene ice sheets to orbital forcing. Paleogeogr. Paleoclimatol. Paleoecol. 309, 98–110 (2011).
Williams, T. et al. Evidence for iceberg armadas from East Antarctica in the Southern Ocean during the late Miocene and early Pliocene. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 290, 351–361 (2010).
Whitehead, J. M., Quilty, P. G., Harwood, D. M. & McMinn, A. Early Pliocene paleoenvironment of the Sørsdal Formation, Vestfold Hills, based on diatom data. Mar. Micropaleontol. 41, 125–152 (2001).
Whitehead, J. M. & McKelvey, B. C. The stratigraphy of the Pliocene-lower Pleistocene Bardin Bluffs Formation, Amery Oasis, northern Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica. Antarctic Sci. 13, 79–86 (2001).
Tauxe, L. et al. Chronostratigraphic framework for the IODP Expedition 318 cores from the Wilkes Land Margin: Constraints for paleoceanographic reconstruction. Paleoceanography 27, PA2214 (2012).
Escutia, C., Brinkhuis, H., Klaus, A. & Expedition 318 Scientists, Proc. Intergrated Ocean Drilling Program Vol. 318 (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Management International, 2011).
Escutia, C. et al. Circum-Antarctic warming events between 4 and 3.5 Ma recorded in marine sediments from the Prydz Bay (ODP Leg 188) and the Antarctic Peninsula (ODP Leg 178) margins. Glob. Planet. Change 69, 170–184 (2009).
Bohaty, S. M. & Harwood, D. M. Southern Ocean Pliocene paleotemperature variation from high-resolution silicoflagellate biostratigraphy. Mar. Micropaleontol. 33, 241–272 (1998).
Whitehead, J. M. & Bohaty, S. M. Pliocene summer sea surface temperature reconstruction using silicoflagellates from Southern Ocean ODP Site 1165. Paleoceanography 18, 1075 (2003).
McKay, R. M. et al. Antarctic and Southern Ocean influences on Late Pliocene global cooling. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 6423–6428 (2012).
Ferraccioli, F., Armadillo, E., Jordan, T., Bozzo, E. & Corr, H. Aeromagnetic exploration over the East Antarctic Ice Sheet: A new view of the Wilkes Subglacial Basin. Tectonophysics 478, 62–77 (2009).
Fretwell, P. et al. Bedmap2: Improved ice bed, surface and thickness datasets for Antarctica. Cryosphere 7, 375–393 (2013).
Naish, T. et al. Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations. Nature 458, 322–328 (2009).
Alley, R. B. et al. How glaciers entrain and transport basal sediment: Physical constraints. Quat. Sci. Rev. 16, 1017–1038 (1997).
Jamieson, S. S. R., Sugden, D. E. & Hulton, N. R. J. The evolution of the subglacial landscape of Antarctica. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 293, 1–27 (2010).
Pollard, D. & DeConto, R. M. Modelling West Antarctic ice sheet growth and collapse through the past five million years. Nature 458, 329–332 (2009).
Lisiecki, L. E. & Raymo, M. E. A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ 18 O records. Paleoceanography 20, PA1003 (2005).
Gradstein, F., Ogg, J., Schmitz, M. & Ogg, G. The Geological Time Scale (Elsevier, 2012).
Acknowledgements
This research used samples and data provided by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). The IODP is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and participating countries under the management of Joint Oceanographic Institutions. We thank B. Coles and K. Kreissig for technical laboratory support, and A. G. C. Graham for assistance with cartography. Financial support for this study was provided by NERC UK IODP to T.v.d.F. (grants NE/H014144/1 and NE/H025162/1), by the European Commission to T.v.d.F. (grant IRG 230828), by the National Science Foundation to T.W., T.v.d.F. and S.R.H. (grant ANT 09-44489), by the NSF to S.P. (grant OCE 1060080), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to C.E. (grant CTM 2011-24079), by the National Science Foundation to L.T. (grant OCE 1058858), by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research to F.S. and H.B. (grant 86610110), by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science KAKHENI to M.I. (grants 25550015 and 23244102) and by the National Research Foundation of Korea to B-K.K. (grant 2011-0021632).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
C.P.C., T.v.d.F., T.W. and S.R.H. designed the research; C.P.C. carried out the neodymium and strontium isotope analyses; M.I. and M.K. performed the diatom counts, interpreted in discussion with S.M.B. and C.R.R.; F.J.J-E., J.J.G. and C.E. were responsible for XRF bulk geochemistry analyses; R.M.M., M.O.P. and S.P. carried out sedimentological analyses; A.L.G., F.J.J-E. and C.E. collected clay mineralogy data; B-K.K. analysed opal contents.; L.T. and S.S. were responsible for magnetic analyses. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the data. C.P.C. and T.v.d.F. wrote the paper with input from all authors.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (PDF 1638 kb)
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (XLSX 13 kb)
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (XLSX 17 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Cook, C., van de Flierdt, T., Williams, T. et al. Dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet during Pliocene warmth. Nature Geosci 6, 765–769 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1889
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1889
This article is cited by
-
An ancient river landscape preserved beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Multiple episodes of ice loss from the Wilkes Subglacial Basin during the Last Interglacial
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to past and future climate change
Nature (2022)
-
Wilkes subglacial basin ice sheet response to Southern Ocean warming during late Pleistocene interglacials
Nature Communications (2022)
-
The Paris Climate Agreement and future sea-level rise from Antarctica
Nature (2021)