How do ice sheets respond to a warming world? The Antarctic ice sheet is a dominant source of uncertainty in our projections of sea-level rise. Recent ice sheet retreat behaviour is poorly understood, but insights into this past response to climate change will lend us better predictions of future ice dynamics. Existing models and data tend to disagree when it comes to predicting the timing and extent of past retreat; with thousands of years and hundreds of metres of ice separating these estimates, it’s a deep crevasse of uncertainty.
My research aim is to reconstruct past ice thickness changesince the Last Glacial Maximum (~20,000 years ago) using cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating. I am focusing on the thinning history of Byrd Glacier: a fast-flowing outlet of the East Antarctic ice sheet that drains a vast amount of ice into the Ross Ice Shelf.
Together with a team of supervisors and PhD student Aylin de Campo, I was fortunate to set up camp and conduct fieldwork in the Transantarctic Mountains. Mt. Tadpole and Mt. Tuatara stick up out of the ice next to the Byrd Glacier fjord, and from these mountains, we’ve collected many buckets full of rocks deposited by the glacier to tell its story.
Following a few months of mahi in the lab, the results will reveal how the height of the glacier has changed over time and the speed at which it thinned. Modellers—like others here in the Antarctic Research Centre—can then use this geological data to improve the accuracy of their ice sheet models and better predict future change in the icy continent, as well as the wide-reaching effects across the globe. As a non-Māori researcher, I am aware of the enriching value and yet the scarcity of te ao Māori knowledge in this space. I aim to identify the barriers for Māori to engage with Antarctic science, since building this relationship with Antarctica would enable Māori to develop new layers of knowledge and connections with southerly ancestors.
