Instability of the East Antartic Ice Sheet during the Pliocene warmth?

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures. Based on projections published in the Nobel Peace Prize winning report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the Earth's surface is estimated to warm between 1.8 to 4.0 degree Celsius by the end of the century. Already now, we are observing the retreat of mountain glaciers, limited extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, and melting around the edges of the polar ice caps in Greenland and parts of Antarctica. Projected sea level rise by 2100 ranges between 0.2 and 0.6 m. This range however does not include potential contributions from the ice caps, which today tie up a water mass equivalent to about 60-70 m of sea level change. From studying the climate in the past, we know that the polar ice caps can wax and wane with changing climatic conditions. The last time Earth climate was significantly warmer than today, for an extended amount of time, was 4.5 to 3 million years ago, during the time period of the Pliocene. Global temperatures in the warm Pliocene were about 3 degree Celsius higher than today. Sea level estimates for this time range from 5 to 40 m higher than today, with a most commonly used value around 25 m. Such an elevated sea level would not only mean the disappearance of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, but also instability in parts of the massive East Antarctic ice sheet. Data are however sparse, and models give conflicting results on whether melting only acted on the more vulnerable West Antarctic ice sheet, or also on parts of the large East Antarctic ice sheet. With our project we will try to address exactly this dilemma. We are going to analyse the chemical composition of ice-rafted sediments from the Southern Ocean off East Antarctica. This material was carried to its place of deposition by icebergs, and its geochemical fingerprint contained in mineral grains, allows us to track back the exact area of the continent where the iceberg was coming from. This in turn tells us which part of the ice margin became instable in the past. It is such evidence from the geological record that is vital to test and refine existing climate models. We will investigate which adjustments have to be made to climate models to reproduce our observational data. Once we succeed to produce a better database for understanding ice extent during the Pliocene warmth, and once we have a climate model that matches the observations of the past, we should have higher confidence to use the same type of model to foresee what may happen in the future.