EXTENDING THE AMERICA’S PEP TRANSECT THROUGH THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA TO THE POLE

The Earth’s climate undergoes significant natural changes, which are not yet understood. Such changes are clearly expressed in Antarctic palaeoclimate records, with some of the most spectacular changes apparently out of phase with those in the northern hemisphere. Even in the Holocene period (last 10,000 years), changes significant enough to destroy the major Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have occurred. Antarctic and subantarctic late Quaternary climates and environments can be inferred from terrestrial deposits, including lake sediments, moss banks and geomorphological features. In this presentation I review some of the most recent terrestrial evidence contributing to our understanding of the long-term climate and environmental history of the Antarctic Peninsula and subantarctic regions. These include lake sediment records documenting periods of ice shelf loss, changing temperatures and ecological shifts and geomorphological evidence of former relative sea levels. Ultimately, our aim is to determine how the climates of the Antarctic Peninsula and subantarctic regions have varied in comparison to that of the rest of the world; and especially where, in the latitudinal transect from the AP through the Americas (the IGBP PEP 1 transect), the climate influence of the Antarctic gives way to a climate pattern following Greenland. This will provide evidence needed to test competing models about the causes of the most important climate changes of the past, and constraints for models predicting the future.