Collaborative Research: The Timing and Spatial Expression of the Bipolar Seesaw

The main objectives of the proposed work are twofold: (1) to fully characterize the timing and spatial pattern of millennial-scale Antarctic climate change during the deglaciation and Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) cycles using multiple synchronized Antarctic ice cores; (2) to provide state-of-the-art, internally-consistent ice core chronologies for all US Antarctic ice cores. The WAIS Divide, Siple Dome, Byrd, Taylor Dome and South Pole ice cores will be synchronized using volcanic, dust and gas (CH4 and d18Oatm) markers; this synchronization will be combined with ice-flow and firn densification modeling to create gas-age and ice-age scales for these ice cores, consistent with the highly accurate WAIS Divide chronology.

The grant will support ongoing efforts to synchronize the WAIS Divide core to the Dome C and Dronning Maud Land cores, which in turn have been synchronized to several East Antarctic ice cores. Using this chronological framework, the interpolar phasing of millennial-scale climate change will be investigated during the DO cycles using 6 Antarctic ice cores, and during the last deglaciation using 11 ice cores. The relationship between accumulation rate and site temperature during the natural warming of the last deglaciation will be investigated for all the Antarctic ice cores included in the framework.