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PALAEOCLIMATE

Ancient ice-sheet collapse

Nature Geoscience volume 13, pages 328–329 (2020)Cite this article

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A revised age reconstruction suggests marine-based regions of the Eurasian Ice Sheet melted rapidly, contributing to a major sea-level rise some 14,600 years ago. Such a rapid collapse of massive ice hints at the vulnerability of Earth’s remaining ice sheets.

Vast ice sheets once covered much of the Northern Hemisphere1. Driven by gradual shifts of Earth’s orbit, their growth required millennia but their demise was much faster. This asymmetry is observed in the saw-tooth pattern of deep-sea oxygen isotope records, which in large part reflect changes in terrestrial ice volume2. The most recent Ice Age ended with the loss of the Laurentide, Cordilleran and Eurasian ice-sheet complexes, which melted at various stages during the last deglaciation. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Brendryen and collaborators3 reconstruct the history of the Eurasian Ice Sheet complex and find that the meltwater from its demise made a substantial contribution to one of the fastest sea-level rise events, Meltwater Pulse 1A, as part of the warm Bølling transition period. The result was a sea-level rise of 12–14 m in less than four centuries.

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Fig. 1: Larsen C iceberg broken free from Antarctica, September 2017.

Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo

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  1. Department of Geology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Joseph D. Ortiz

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  1. Joseph D. Ortiz
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Correspondence to Joseph D. Ortiz.

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Ortiz, J.D. Ancient ice-sheet collapse. Nat. Geosci. 13, 328–329 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0572-7

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