ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Early Last Interglacial ocean warming drove substantial ice mass loss from Antarctica.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mapping tipping risks from Antarctic ice basins under global warming.Nature climate change · 2026Article
- Failure to track a stable AMOC state under rapid climate change.Nature climate change · 2026Article
- Extremely poleward shift of Antarctic Circumpolar Current by eccentricity during the Last Interglacial.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Review
- Episodic reef growth in the Last Interglacial driven by competing influence of polar ice sheets to sea level rise.Science advances · 2025Article
- Sedimentary DNA insights into Holocene Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae) populations and ecology in the Ross Sea, Antarctica.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets.Communications earth & environment · 2025Review
- Constraining the contribution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to Last Interglacial sea level.Science advances · 2023Article
- Multiple episodes of ice loss from the Wilkes Subglacial Basin during the Last Interglacial.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Subglacial precipitates record Antarctic ice sheet response to late Pleistocene millennial climate cycles.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Wilkes subglacial basin ice sheet response to Southern Ocean warming during late Pleistocene interglacials.Nature communications · 2022Article
- A Case Study for the Recovery of Authentic Microbial Ancient DNA from Soil Samples.Microorganisms · 2022Article
- Abruptly attenuated carbon sequestration with Weddell Sea dense waters by 2100.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Abrupt climate changes in the last two deglaciations simulated with different Northern ice sheet discharge and insolation.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Decadal-scale onset and termination of Antarctic ice-mass loss during the last deglaciation.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Rapid postglacial rebound amplifies global sea level rise following West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse.Science advances · 2021Article
- A Standardized Approach for Shotgun Metagenomic Analysis of Ancient Dental Calculus.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2021Article
- The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.Nature · 2020Article
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32 authors.
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Abstract
The future response of the Antarctic ice sheet to rising temperatures remains highly uncertain. A useful period for assessing the sensitivity of Antarctica to warming is the Last Interglacial (LIG) (129 to 116 ky), which experienced warmer polar temperatures and higher global mean sea level (GMSL) (+6 to 9 m) relative to present day. LIG sea level cannot be fully explained by Greenland Ice Sheet melt (∼2 m), ocean thermal expansion, and melting mountain glaciers (∼1 m), suggesting substantial Antarctic mass loss was initiated by warming of Southern Ocean waters, resulting from a weakening Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in response to North Atlantic surface freshening. Here, we report a blue-ice record of ice sheet and environmental change from the Weddell Sea Embayment at the periphery of the marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which is underlain by major methane hydrate reserves. Constrained by a widespread volcanic horizon and supported by ancient microbial DNA analyses, we provide evidence for substantial mass loss across the Weddell Sea Embayment during the LIG, most likely driven by ocean warming and associated with destabilization of subglacial hydrates. Ice sheet modeling supports this interpretation and suggests that millennial-scale warming of the Southern Ocean could have triggered a multimeter rise in global sea levels. Our data indicate that Antarctica is highly vulnerable to projected increases in ocean temperatures and may drive ice-climate feedbacks that further amplify warming.
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