EXPROBE-WAIS: Exposed Rock Beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, A Test for Interglacial Ice Sheet Collapse

The principal aim is to identify climatic conditions or thresholds in the climate system that led to ice-sheet collapse in the past, and assess the threat of climate change to vulnerable ice sheets in the future. We recovered a subglacial bedrock core from beneath 150 m of ice cover in the Pirrit Hills, in West Antarctica, and measured cosmogenic nuclide profiles to determine the bedrock exposure history.

Cosmic-ray-produced Be-10 and Al-26 in the core indicate: (i) Continuous Pleistocene ice cover averaging ~200 m; and (ii) One or more pre-Pleistocene deglaciations that exposed the core site for ~200-800 years in the Pliocene, or > 800 years, in the Miocene. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of the core top precludes exposure to sunlight since ~450 ka, consistent with the Be-10 and Al-26 data. Trapped atmospheric argon in ice recovered from 80 cm above the bedrock surface indicates an age for the enclosing ice > 2 Ma (delta 40Ar/36Ar = -0.15 per-mil).