Past Antarctica: Paleoclimatology and Climate Change

Past Antarctica: Paleoclimatology and Climate Change presents research on the past and present of Antarctica in reference to its current condition, including considerations for effects due to climate change. Experts in the field explore key topics, including environmental changes, human colonization and present environmental trends. Addressing a wide range of fields, including the biosphere, geology and biochemistry, the book offers geographers, climatologists and other Earth scientists a vital resource that is beneficial to an understanding of Antarctica, its history and conservation efforts.

• Synthesizes research on the past and present of Antarctica, bringing together top Earth scientists who work in this discipline
• Presents the most complete reconstruction of the paleoclimate and environment of Antarctica, tying in long-term climatic changes to the current environment
• Offers perspectives from different branches of the Earth Sciences using a spatial-temporal lens

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jun 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780128179260

Book preview

continent.

Preface

Marc Oliva; Jesús Ruiz-Fernández

Antarctica, the coldest, driest, and most remote continent, is facing a variety of environmental changes in response to the current climate trend. Today, there is an intense scientific debate on the magnitude and geographical patterns of this warming, as well as on the implications that the changing climate may entail for marine and terrestrial ecosystems on the frozen continent. Global climate change triggered by greenhouse gas concentrations is often appointed as the major driver of the current warming. However, we need to look into the past to understand whether the recent and accelerated trend toward warming is part of natural climate variability or, instead, it is an amplified response of climate change in polar regions.

The Quaternary, the most recent 2.6 million years of Earth’s history, is characterized by a succession of cycles of cold (glacial) and warm (interglacial) climatic fluctuations that led to a series of large-scale environmental and atmospheric changes: formation and melting of huge ice sheets, dramatic changes of global sea level, continuous redefinition of coastlines, large shifts on land uses and ecosystems, variations of greenhouse gas concentrations, and large-scale reorganization of oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. These series of glacial and interglacial periods have also affected Antarctica, with implications also in its landscape and life on the continent.

Greenland and Antarctica have been the only ice sheets that survived the last glacial cycle. In the case of Antarctica, ice has continuously extended over most of the continent for several million years, and today, more than 99.6% of its surface is still covered by ice. The long-term global warming that started 20,000 years favored only a small retreat of the large Pleistocene ice sheet, but most of the continent still remains under several kilometers of ice. When people think about Antarctica, the first thing that usually pops into their minds is ice and cold. But Antarctica is much more: not only it is a frozen desert, but also it is a vast land with volcanoes, bare ground, unique terrestrial and marine ecosystems, a homeland of epic expeditions, and a continent hiding the record of Earth’s past history.

The book that you have in your hands constitutes the first multidisciplinary effort to summarize what we know from the past of Antarctica in a single book. Some of the most renown experts on this continent have provided a broad overview on the past evolution of this continent until nowadays, presenting how climate and atmospheric patterns have shaped the limits of ice and land surface, the ice-free areas, and the colonization of wildlife and vegetation. From the stories revealed by the ice bubbles preserved in the ice cores of snow fallen almost 1 million years ago to the archeological remnants left by the first visitors almost 200 years ago, this book constitutes an exciting journey to the past.

We hope that this book, with its conceptual analyses and study cases, will be used as a reference manual by polar researchers and inspire a new generation of scientists interested in unveiling the secrets still preserved in Antarctica. Further research is needed to bridge the past and the present in a rapidly changing continent to anticipate the potential changes that the current warming may have in the Great South.

Introduction to Past Antarctica

Jesús Ruiz-Fernándeza; Marc Olivab,    a Department of Geography, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain, b Department of Geography, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Our understanding of the climatic, geological, geomorphological and ecological evolution of Antarctica has substantially increased over the last decades. Vast amounts of information have come to light recently, making it difficult to have an overall perspective of the past Antarctica. This book summarizes the environmental and climatic evolution of Antarctica, highlighting recent advances and changes.

Written by renowned scientists and researchers, this book includes 15 contributions that cover a wide and diverse range of topics following four major perspectives: (1) past climate variability, (2) past geological and geomorphological dynamics, (3) biodiversity and past ecological changes and (4) human exploration and recent climate trends.

Part 1 includes three chapters. The first, by Barbara Stenni, examines temperature variability during past glacial and interglacial cycles from water isotope records of deep ice cores drilled in continental Antarctica. In their chapter, Dominique Raynaud and co-authors analyze atmospheric gases trapped in air bubbles existing within the ice that provide the most accurate reconstruction of changes in the content of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O) of the last 800,000 years. A close connection is detected between atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperatures during successive glacial and interglacial cycles. The first two chapters highlight the importance of recovering older ice cores to understand what happened during the so-called Mid-Pleistocene transition where an important change occurred in the timing of glacial and interglacial cycles and atmospheric CO2 variations. Past climatic and environmental changes can be also tracked using lacustrine sedimentary sequences. In the third chapter, Santiago Giralt and co-authors examine lake records as a source to infer glacial oscillations as well as climate evolution, particularly throughout the Holocene. They discuss the geochronological problems of dating lake sediments in the polar regions to develop robust chronological models. To overcome this problem, it is increasingly common to use multiproxy geochronological approaches.

Part 2 is composed of five chapters dealing with the geological and geomorphological evolution of Antarctica. In his chapter, John Smellie summarizes the role played by volcanism in the configuration of the Antarctic continent. Tectonic processes and volcanoes have affected Antarctica throughout geological time occurring on a wide range of temporal and spatial scales, from small monogenetic volcanoes to voluminous effusive and even explosive polygenic volcanoes. Therefore there are large areas of Antarctica formed by volcanic rocks. In addition, the chapter highlights the importance of Antarctic volcanism to life on Earth, both in terms of its capacity to trigger several mass extinctions (e.g., Early Jurassic) as well as its role as a refuge that allowed the survival of terrestrial life in Antarctica during past glaciations. In the next chapter, Daniel Nývlt and co-authors provide a complete update of the last deglaciation in Antarctica. They reconstruct the pattern of deglaciation since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) focusing on three distinct geographical areas: East Antarctica, West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula and surrounding islands. They also highlight important notes about the uncertainties in the use of some absolute dating techniques, such as cosmogenic nuclide dating on nunataks and rock outcrops following the retreat of cold-based glaciers. A detailed knowledge of the chronology of deglaciation is crucial to better understand ice-free terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, including sea level changes. In this sense, Elie Verleyen and co-authors provide a comprehensive review of the changes in the relative sea level following the last glacial cycle. These changes were driven by variations in glacial dynamics at a regional scale, glacio-isostasy and eustatic sea level through time. As a consequence of glacial retreat, recently deglaciated environments are affected by periglacial dynamics. In the next chapter, Mauro Guglielmin examines the distribution and characteristics of periglacial processes throughout the ice-free environments in Antarctica and discusses their paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic implications. The author discusses current permafrost distribution and ground thermal regime, as well as periglacial phenomena including permafrost-related features (mainly rock glaciers and frost mounds). The impact of ground ice also affects soil processes and the types of soils existing in Antarctica. James Bockheim, in his chapter, focuses on different soils following chronological criteria, distinguishing soils formed during the Early Miocene to those forming now during the Anthropocene. He also discusses the surficial geologic and soil-forming processes in different areas of the Maritime and Continental Antarctica.

Part 3 focuses on the evolution of fauna and flora in the continent. Their current distribution is a consequence of several past geological and climatic processes occurring at multiple temporal scales, and this is discussed in three complementary chapters. Greta Vega and Miguel Ángel Olalla-Tárraga analyze past changes on fauna and flora distribution in Antarctica by means of the fossil and palynological records from the Paleozoic to the Cenozoic, with a main focus on a time period of 200 million years that occurred between the two main Phanerozoic glaciations. The authors highlight the impact that the succession of climatic changes at geological scale led to expansions and contractions of species, the redistribution of biodiversity, as well as the occurrence of large-scale extinctions. In parallel, Peter Convey and co-authors delve into the study of refuges of Antarctic biodiversity. The scarce and very often cryptic biota of this continent is unique and due to the evolutionary radiation on multimillion-year timescales. This necessarily implies the existence of ice-free environments that acted as refuges through the multiple glacial cycles that occurred during the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene epochs. The authors point out an important evolutionary adaptation to survive in extremely hostile environments called cryptobiosis, in which an organism or cell becomes completely inactive from a biological point of view, to later return to normal activity several tens to some hundred years later. At a more recent timescale, Nicoletta Cannone examines geoecological responses to climatic and environmental variations until the late Pleistocene and since the LGM. Interestingly, she also focuses on the current geoecological dynamics to recent warming and rapid glacial retreat, observed in many areas of the Antarctic Peninsula region during the second half of the twentieth century.

Finally, the last chapters examine the recent changes that have occurred in the continent over the last few centuries, with a focus on climate and human activities. Ryan Fogt and Kyle Clem study the climate teleconnection of Antarctica with the middle and low latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Changes inherent to the atmospheric circulation of the middle and tropical latitudes cause feedbacks that act in Antarctica on multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this sense, Marilyn Raphael and co-authors analyze recent trends in Antarctic climate focusing on the following three key elements: (1) the Southern Annular Mode, (2) the Amundsen Sea Low, and (3) the Pacific South American pattern. Authors highlight that both natural climate variability and anthropogenic forcing have played important roles in the observed recent climate changes. The remoteness of Antarctica and its hostile climate impeded the sustained presence of humans until the early 19th century. Michael Pearson and co-authors examine early human interaction in the continent in terms of geographical exploration, scientific research in various fields (biology, botany, geology, meteorology) and economic exploitation by whalers and sealers. Their objectives were closely linked to the ambition and expansion of prestige of several nations and empires. Human activities in the Great South have expanded significantly and Antarctica has become a global geopolitical issue. Jerónimo López-Martínez, former president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, traces back the road that led to the signing of the Antarctic Treaty and the future challenges that the current human presence in Antarctica must tackle in the forthcoming decades.

All chapters in this book include a final section in which the experts identify knowledge gaps and propose future research lines. Therefore this book is an effective tool to better understand the functioning of past and present Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems. It also promotes research in unsolved issues that still need to be addressed by the Antarctic scientific community.

Part 1

Reconstructing past climate variability

Chapter 1

Long-term climate evolution based on ice core records

Barbara Stenni    Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Venezia, Italy

Abstract

The observed climate variability at the time scales of glacial-interglacial cycles and at the millennial ones are here summarized using water isotope records obtained from deep ice cores drilled in the Antarctic continent. The use of oxygen (and/or hydrogen) isotopic composition as a temperature proxy, as well as the different climatic and postdepositional factors impacting on it, is briefly introduced. So far only two ice cores, EPICA Dome C and Dome F, extend back in time; Dome C for 800,000 years and Dome F for 720,000 years. Both isotopic records show a change in the glacial-interglacial amplitude around 450,000 years before present, the so-called Mid-Brunhes event, with a lower interglacial intensity before this event, also shown in the CO2 records. This shows a strong association between temperature and atmospheric CO2 content.

Keywords

Ice cores; Antarctica; Water stable isotopes; Pleistocene; Glacial/interglacial variability; Abrupt changes; Temperature reconstructions

Introduction

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent report from 2013 as well as the last Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, accepted and approved in September 2019 (https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/home/), have clearly established that the Earth’s climate is changing and that these changes are due to anthropogenic activities with increasing effects on the cryosphere (IPCC, 2013). The Antarctic ice sheet, the largest fresh water reservoir on Earth, is regionally losing mass, mainly by accelerated ice-stream flow, with a consequent increasing rate in global mean sea level. The only precedent for this in the last 20,000 years is a global mean sea level change of 130 m due to the last deglaciation (Clark et al., 2016). Several investigations assessing changes in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) have highlighted the large interannual climate variability in Antarctica and the sparseness/shortness of available instrumental observations starting only since 1958 CE, both of which are hampering our ability to interpret recent Antarctic climate trends (Jones et al., 2016). However, a sustained warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica stand out as being robust features (Steig et al., 2013). For improving our understanding and putting the recent variability in a more long-term context, scientists are turning to the study of natural archives, which above the Antarctic ice sheet is essentially the study of ice cores. At a continental scale, a lack of significant warming over the last 100 years has been observed in a recent temperature reconstruction for distinct climatic regions, carried out in the framework of the PAGES Antarctica2k working group (Stenni et al., 2017). However, at least three regions, the Antarctic Peninsula, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the coastal Dronning Maud Land have shown significant positive isotopic and temperature trends. The last 100-year trend appears unusual, in the context of natural century-scale trends over the last 2000 years, only for the Antarctic Peninsula. A 20th-century snowfall increase, unusual in the context of the past 300 years, has been reported for this region by Thomas et al. (2017).

Starting from the first deep ice cores recovered both in the Greenland ice sheet, at Camp Century (Dansgaard et al., 1969), and in Antarctica, at Byrd (Epstein et al., 1970), during the 1960s up to the iconic EPICA project (EPICA Community Members, 2004; Jouzel et al., 2007), a new discipline has emerged: Ice Core Science. The strong interdisciplinarity characterizing the study of ice cores is possible due to several reasons: (1) technological advancement in ice core analysis (e.g., Röthlisberger et al., 2000) and the use of smaller sample amounts, which allow analysis of an increasing number of climate and environmental proxies; (2) the interpretation and calibration of the proxies against present-day climate and environmental conditions with the help of climate models (e.g., Goursaud et al., 2018); and (3) the integration of climate records from different paleoclimate archives (ice cores, marine sedimentary cores, speleothems, lake archives, etc.) with climate models (e.g., Bracegirdle et al., 2019) using data-assimilation techniques (Klein et al., 2019). Polar ice sheets have been recognized as one of the most powerful natural archives since the air bubbles trapped inside the ice are able to provide an undisturbed record of past atmospheric composition (CO2, CH4, N2O), confirming the tight coupling of temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (see Chapter 2). Ice cores are preserving climate information from our recent past up to the last eight glacial-interglacial cycles (EPICA Community Members, 2004).

Recently, paleoclimate research scientists coordinated inside EU and PAGES (http://pastglobalchanges.org/) projects have been providing paleotemperature reconstructions at continental (Abram et al., 2016) and global (PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013, 2017) scales. These initiatives aim to bring together the paleoclimate and modeling scientific communities to understand the processes linking different components of the climate system and linking climatic responses to external forcing over different timescales, starting from the last 2000 years up to the past interglacial cycles (Capron et al., 2014; Past Interglacials Working Group of PAGES, 2016), as well as to the past glacial climate variability (Buizert et al., 2018; Brook and Buizert, 2018) and Pleistocene terminations (Landais et al., 2013). At the same time, the quest for paleoclimate synthesis has posed the question of data availability and the need of ensuring a sustained use of paleoclimate data in the future that can be summarized in the Findable Available Interoperable Reusable (FAIR) principles. In the last few years there has been a clear increase in the efforts of promoting open data policy inside the Antarctic ice core community (Stenni and Thomas, 2018).

This chapter examines the isotopic records obtained from deep ice cores covering at least the last 20,000 years. After a brief introduction of water stable isotopes and their use as a temperature proxy, the chapter presents results obtained from the longest ice cores. The chapter also describes climate variability during the Last Glacial Cycle highlighting the most recent results obtained in interhemispheric synchronization. It also reviews data on the present and the last interglacial cycle. The chapter ends with conclusions and some remarks on future perspectives.

Water stable isotopes

Water stable isotopes (δ¹⁸O: the deviation of the ratio ¹⁸O/¹⁶O in a sample relative to that of the Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water; δD or δ²H: the deviation of the ratio D/H or ²H/¹H) from ice cores are classically used to provide high-resolution information on local temperature. This is due to the successive fractionation processes occurring at each phase transition in the water cycle, starting from the oceanic regions where the moisture forms to the condensation sites where precipitation in the form of snowfall takes place (Jouzel, 2014). A close correlation between condensation temperature and the oxygen/hydrogen isotopic composition of polar precipitation has been observed starting from the 1950s to the 1960s (Dansgaard, 1964). The distillation process occurring during air mass moisture transport from the source regions toward the polar ice sheets has been theorized through simple distillation models (Jouzel and Merlivat, 1984) as well as sophisticated atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) equipped with water stable isotopes (Werner et al., 2011, 2018). However, uncertainties can arise from atmospheric processes associated, for example, to the mixing of air masses from the moisture source regions (Sodemann and Stohl, 2009) to the deposition sites as well as to past changes in precipitation intermittency and seasonality, as ice cores only archive a climate signal when snowfall occurs. The isotopic signals measured in an individual ice core record reflect a local climatic signal archived through deposition (intermittency of precipitation, wind drift) and postdeposition (wind scouring, sublimation, snow metamorphism) processes (Ekaykin et al., 2004; Frezzotti et al., 2007). These processes can distort the initial climate signal and produce nonclimatic noise particularly in the dry regions of the central Antarctic plateau where the longest deep ice core records have been retrieved. Recently, with the advent of the measurements of water vapor isotopic composition above Greenland (Steen-Larsen et al., 2014) and Antarctica (Ritter et al., 2016), postdepositional processes associated with water vapor exchange between surface snow and the atmosphere have been suggested (Casado et al., 2016; Touzeau et al., 2016). However, the impacts of these processes for temperature reconstructions from ice core isotopic records have not yet been quantified and should be limited when considering paleoclimate reconstructions from deep ice core records where multidecadal-centennial resolutions are considered.

The relationship between snowfall isotopic composition and surface temperature may also be affected by changes in the links between surface and condensation temperature, or by changes in moisture source (evaporation conditions) as well as changes in atmospheric transport pathways. Over the past two decades, surface snow samples (mainly 1 m integrated snow samples, snow pits and shallow firn cores) have been collected along transects in different Antarctic regions in the frame of several international joint efforts (e.g., the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) project). These data have produced geographical (spatial) relationships between surface snow isotopic composition (δ¹⁸O and/or δD) and temperature, obtained from weather stations or measured at 10 m depth in the firn, and compiled by Masson-Delmotte et al. (2008). Isotopic/temperature sensitivities of 0.80 and 6.34‰ °C− 1 were calculated for δ¹⁸O and δD, respectively, for the whole Antarctic ice sheet. Fig. 1 reports the spatial δ¹⁸O/T relationship obtained for the Dome C drainage basin in the frame of two ITASE traverses carried out by Italian and French scientists in 1998–99 and 2001–02 (Proposito et al., 2002; Becagli et al., 2004) and in the Northern Victoria Land by firn-ice core activities (Stenni et al., 2000). Here, the spatial δ¹⁸O/T sensitivity ranges between 0.60 and 1.17‰ °C− 1 mainly reflecting the influence of different sectors of the Southern Ocean (Indian Ocean and Ross Sea sectors) to the moisture transport.

Fig. 1 Spatial surface snow δ ¹⁸ O/temperature relationships for the Dome C drainage basin area. The samples were collected during two ITASE traverses ( Proposito et al., 2002; Becagli et al., 2004) and Italian firn-ice core activities in Northern Victoria Land ( Stenni et al., 2000). The δ/T relationship for monthly precipitation samples collected at Concordia Station ( Stenni et al., 2016) is also reported.

These spatial relationships can vary through time as demonstrated by studies considering the sampling of Antarctic precipitation and showing that seasonal and interannual isotope vs temperature slopes are generally smaller than spatially derived ones. A precipitation monitoring program at the French-Italian Concordia station (Dome C) suggests a lower δ¹⁸O/T slope, 0.43‰ °C− 1, than the spatial one (Fig. 1; Stenni et al., 2016). If we remove the seasonal cycle a higher slope of 0.96‰ °C− 1 is obtained. Furthermore, precipitation is not equivalent to snow accumulation due to wind redistribution and postdepositional processes (water vapor exchanges between the surface snow and the overlying atmosphere and diffusion in the snow-firn layers). This is as suggested by Touzeau et al. (2016), who analyzed the ¹⁷O excess of a subset of the 2010 precipitation samples from Concordia and surface snow samples and snow pits from Dome C and Vostok. These authors suggest an even lower δ/T slope in surface snow samples than in precipitation samples. Nevertheless, the study of the isotopic composition of precipitation samples can provide a better process-based understanding from the scale of weather systems to seasonal and interannual variations. Obtaining high-resolution snowfall datasets is important to test whether models correctly resolve synoptic-scale processes.

Atmospheric GCMs equipped with water stable isotopes may be also used for investigating this relationship in different climate conditions than present-day, such as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The simulations suggest that the present-day spatial δ/T slope for inland Antarctica can be used with good approximations for glacial to present-day changes (Jouzel et al., 2003). However, this does not seem to apply for periods with warmer climate conditions or for increased CO2 projections (Sime et al., 2008, 2009), which produce a lower sensitivity of δ¹⁸O to temperature (0.34‰ °C− 1).

A recent paper by Werner et al. (2018) using ECHAM5-wiso model results suggests that the simulated present-day spatial δ/T slopes in Antarctica are similar to those observed (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2008) and those simulated during the LGM. Moreover, they are in quite good agreement with the simulated LGM present-day temporal δ/T slopes with values only slightly lower than present-day spatial slopes. This conclusion reinforces what was obtained from Jouzel et al. (2003) considering the Antarctic spatial slope a good surrogate as a paleothermometer with only a slight underestimation of about 15% for calculating the LGM-present-day temperature difference.

Finally, the co-isotopic analysis of snow and ice samples allows the calculation of the second-order parameter deuterium excess (d = δD − 8*δ¹⁸O), firstly defined by Dansgaard (1964) on the base of the coefficient of 8 of the Global Meteoric Water Line. The deuterium excess can be considered an integrated proxy of the hydrological cycle. It depends on the climatic conditions at the moisture source conditions, mainly sea surface temperature (SST), relative humidity and wind speed (Uemura et al., 2008), but it is also affected by kinetic effects during snow formation (Jouzel and Merlivat, 1984) and can be partly affected by distillation effects during the air mass trajectory. Using simulations with simple isotopic models and inversion procedures it is possible to extract the temperature at the site (Tsite) and at the moisture source regions (Tsource). This methodology has been applied to several deep ice cores, including Vostok (Vimeux et al., 2002), EPICA Dome C (Stenni et al., 2010) and Dome F (Uemura et al., 2018). These moisture source corrections suggest limited effects on site temperature reconstructions.

Deep ice cores in Antarctica

The main Antarctic ice core sites, covering at least the past 20,000 years, are displayed in Fig. 2. The sites where the isotopic data are still not available or those that soon will be drilled are also reported. The geographical and glaciological present-day conditions at the drilling sites are reported in Table 1. The main references to the isotopic profiles as well as the URL links where the data can be obtained, if available, are reported in the last two columns.

Fig. 2 Map of Antarctica showing the drilling site locations using the acronyms reported in Table 1. The map is drawn using the open-source software QGIS and the Quantarctica geographical datasets ( Matsuoka et al., 2018).

Table 1

The longest records obtained so far are those retrieved over the East Antarctic Plateau (EAP), thanks to the low snow accumulation rate (0.021–0.025 m water equivalent year− 1) and the large ice thickness present there. The longest records are those coming from the Dome C, Dome F, and Vostok regions where the paleoclimate reconstructions are covering several glacial/interglacial cycles, reaching 808 (Jouzel et al., 2007), 720 (Uemura et al., 2018), and 423 (Petit et al., 1999) kyr BP (thousands of years BP, where BP is AD 1950). On the other hand, the deep ice cores retrieved in more coastal areas, like Dronning Maud Land (EPICA Community Members, 2006), Talos Dome (Stenni et al., 2011), Law Dome (Morgan et al., 2002), Taylor Dome (Steig et al., 1998), the Antarctic Peninsula (Mulvaney et al., 2014) or in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), where higher snow accumulation rates are found, allow high-resolution studies of the last climatic cycle, in particular focusing on the millennial-scale climate variability over the Last Glacial Cycle (WAIS Divide Project Members, 2015; Buizert et al., 2018), the last deglaciation (Pedro et al., 2011), as well as the Holocene period (Mulvaney et al., 2012; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2011). The focusing on different periods depends on the ice thickness, the snow accumulation rate and the ice flow dynamics characterizing the different ice core drilling sites. The only ice core located at a site with high snow accumulation rate in the EAP is the one recently drilled at South Pole, named SPICE ice core (Casey et al., 2014; Winski et al., 2019). Another recent drilling is the one carried out on Roosevelt Island in the Eastern Ross Sea, where the RICE ice core has been retrieved (Bertler et al., 2018). This new core, along with other existing records surrounding the Ross Sea (TALDICE, Siple Dome, and WAIS Divide), will allow to better constrain the climate evolution of this area over the last deglaciation and