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Late Miocene onset of hyper-aridity in East Antarctica indicated by meteoric beryllium-10 in permafrost

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 492–498 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Continental-scale ice sheets have covered Antarctica since an interval of global cooling near the Eocene–Oligocene boundary around 33.9 million years ago (Ma). However, the sequence of events that led to the emergence of the persistent ice sheet in modern East Antarctica remains disputed. The transition to permanent polar aridity in high elevations of East Antarctica is critical to our understanding of the threshold response of glacial systems in Antarctica to changes in surface temperature at lower elevations. Here we constrain the onset of the polar aridity—which was probably necessary for regional ice-sheet stability—by assessing meteoric beryllium-10 profiles in mid-Miocene and late Quaternary soils at three sites situated 1,200–1,800 metres above sea level in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Interpreting these profiles as indicators of water infiltration, we find that meteoric beryllium-10 entered mid-Miocene soils as late as the late Miocene. Reconstructions based on palaeo-active-layer thickness and known thresholds of meteoric beryllium-10 mobility suggest late Miocene summer temperatures of 7–10 °C with annual precipitation >10 mm. Therefore, the high elevations have probably been under a hyper-arid polar climate since the late Miocene (~6 Ma) and not the middle Miocene (13.8–12.5 Ma) as indicated by some previous reconstructions. Together, our findings indicate that high elevations of the McMurdo Dry Valleys probably experienced warm and wet climatic intervals from ~14.0 to 6.0 Ma, which reconciles observations of coastal warmth and reduced ice in the Ross Embayment. This finding also suggests that the McMurdo Dry Valleys may be more susceptible to climate change than anticipated.

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Fig. 1: Location of the study sites in the MDVs.
Fig. 2: Compiled global and regional palaeoclimatic indicators of the past 17 Myr.
Fig. 3: 10Bemet concentration profiles in high-elevation sites of the MDV.
Fig. 4: Modelling palaeosurface concentrations of 10Bemet to solve for closure age.

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Data availability

The dataset is available in Extended Data Tables 1–3.

Code availability

The latest version of the PERICLIMv1.0 model is available as an R package from https://github.com/tomasuxa/PERICLIMv1.0 (last accessed 30 January 2022).

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Acknowledgements

The Friis Hills Drilling Project (austral summer 2016–2017) was funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment through the Past Antarctic Science Programme (C05X1001) and the Antarctic Science Platform (ANTA1801) to R.L. and T.N. The sampling at University Valley was funded by a NASA-ASTEP grant. Fieldwork at Friis Hills and Table Mountain was made possible with the logistical support of Antarctica New Zealand. We thank A. Pyne, R. Pyne, H. Chorley and Webster Drilling for retrieving the cores at Friis Hills. A special thank you to N. Bertler for allowing us to use the GNS Ice Core Facility to store and sample the permafrost cores. Laboratory work was made possible with the help of the technical staff at the Cosmogenic Nuclide Laboratory at the Victoria University of Wellington (L. Ashworth) and the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics at ETH, Zürich (P. Gautschi). AMS analysis was in part funded by an Antarctic Science International Ltd Bursary to M.V.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Marjolaine Verret, Warren Dickinson, Richard Levy & Tim Naish

  2. Department of Arctic Geology, The University Centre in Svalbard, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Norway

    Marjolaine Verret

  3. School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Cassandra Trinh-Le & Kevin Norton

  4. Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Denis Lacelle

  5. Department of Physics, Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Marcus Christl

  6. GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Richard Levy

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  1. Marjolaine Verret
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Contributions

M.V., W.D., K.N. and D.L. designed this project and contributed to data analysis/interpretation and writing the manuscript. C.T.-L. analysed the preliminary samples from Friis Hills (FA, C1 and C2) and University Valley. M.C. ran the 10Bemet samples, including AMS data reduction. R.L. and T.N. developed the Friis Hills Drilling Project. All authors edited the whole manuscript.

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Correspondence to Marjolaine Verret.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Photos of the location sites.

Photos of the location sites: a. Table Mountain core sites (TM01-1 and TM97) on desert pavement lying above Sirius Group sediments with Ferrar Glacier in the backdrop (photo credit: Warren Dickinson), b. ice table excavated at 30 cm depth at Friis Hills (photo credit: Richard Levy), c. drilling rig retrieving cores during the 2016-2017 Friis Hills Drilling Project (photo credit: Richard Levy) and, d. University Valley site with polygonal ground (photo credit: Denis Lacelle).

Extended Data Fig. 2 10Bemet and 10Bemet/9Be biplot.

Note: here, 9Be is measured independently on a MP-AES.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Duplicate samples at Table Mountain showing 10Bemet concentrations measured by aggressive and mild leaching methods.

Duplicate samples at Table Mountain showing 10Bemet concentrations measured by aggressive17 and mild leaching methods. Dataset in red offset using the duplicate function.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Comparison between mean annual air temperature and active layer measurements at different sites in the MDV and values predicted by the PERICLIMv1.0. model.

Comparison between mean annual air temperature and active layer measurements at different sites in the MDV35 and values predicted by the PERICLIMv1.0. model36. Data is compared to selected median values of Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) sites for the 1990–2011 period (n = 22 with data gaps)75. Error bars represent the range of active layer measured during the studied period.

Extended Data Table 1 Measured and calculated values of 10Bemet in preliminary sites at Friis Hills
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Measured and calculated values of 10Bemet at University Valley
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 Measured and calculated values of 10Bemet at Friis Hills and Table Mountain
Full size table
Extended Data Table 4 Values of parameters used in PERICLIMv1.0 model
Full size table

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Verret, M., Trinh-Le, C., Dickinson, W. et al. Late Miocene onset of hyper-aridity in East Antarctica indicated by meteoric beryllium-10 in permafrost. Nat. Geosci. 16, 492–498 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01193-4

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