Collaborative Research: New Constraints on Post-Glacial Rebound and Holocene Environmental History along the Northern Antarctic Peninsula from Raised Beaches

One line of evidence for accelerated glacier ice loss has been an increase in the rate at which the land has been rising across the Antarctic Peninsula as measured by GPS receivers. However, GPS observations of uplift are limited to the last two decades.

One goal of this study is to determine how these newly observed rates of uplift compare to average rates of uplift across the Antarctic Peninsula over a longer time interval. Researchers reconstructed past sea levels using the age and elevation of ancient beaches now stranded above sea level on the low-lying coastal hills of the Antarctica Peninsula and determined the rate of uplift over the last 5,000 years. The researchers analyzed the structure of the beaches using ground-penetrating radar and the characteristics of beach sediments to understand how sea-level rise and past climate changes are recorded in beach deposits.