ANTARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGES IN THE SCOTIA SEA AND THEIR UNDERLYING MECHANISMS DURING THE PLIO-PLEISTOCENE TRANSITION

International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Site U1537 is located in the northeast section of Dove Basin. This site is positioned in “Iceberg Alley,” the main pathway along which icebergs calved from all sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) travel as they move equatorward into the warmer Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Ice rafted debris (IRD) records from Site U1537 therefore have the potential to reflect the cryosphere dynamics and related climatic conditions of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. This project aims to construct and contextualize IRD abundances in Dove Basin to elucidate Antarctic climate changes during a 100,000 to 200,000-year interval in the Plio-Pleistocene transition, a time period marking the transformation from a world 2-3 ℃ warmer than present to one characterized by continental-scale glaciation at both poles (Patterson et al., 2014). Furthermore, IRD records will be visually correlated to 20,000-year cycles of summer insolation to examine precession pacing in Southern Hemisphere iceberg calving during a time when obliquity dominates globally-integrated climate proxies. Understanding the waxing and waning of ice sheets as well as their underlying causes is crucial in revealing mechanisms of past climate change and sea level rise, providing integral data for future climate prediction.