Antarctic sessions at the 3rd International Congress on Stratigraphy (STRATI2019)

Topic – T6: Antarctic and Arctic

Session – ST6.1: Combining Arctic and Antarctic paleoclimate and paleoceanographic stratigraphic records with models to understand past and future evolution of bi-polar linkages

Conveners: Florence Colleoni, Peter Bjil, Jochen Knies, Laura De Santis

Gaps still persist between observed global mean sea level change and estimated contribution of thermal expansion, mountain glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets. Ice sheet models lack of knowledge about processes regulating the thinning/dismantling of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in response to global warming. A critical issue is to correlate stratigraphic records from both hemispheres together to provide robust constrain to modeling paleo-climatic and ice sheet reconstructions. Chronostratigraphy of polar sediment is controversial, thus more studies in ice proximal and distal deposits as well as innovative and multidisciplinary approach to date polar sediments are needed for reliable paleoclimate and paleoceanographic reconstructions. This session invites contributions exposing analysis of bi-polar linkage in stratigraphic archives from both Antarctic and Arctic regions as well as in regional to global climate/ice-sheet modeling or a combination of both. The session follows the SCAR/PAIS research approach that promotes data-model integration and intercomparison. Multi-proxy analysis between glaciological, terrestrial and marine sedimentological archives are particularly encouraged.

Session – ST6.2: Ice core stratigraphy: regional to global paleoclimatic reconstruction

Conveners: Valter Maggi, Samuel Albani, Robert Mulvaney, Jefferson Cardia Simões

Polar and high mountain glaciers provide information about past climate and environmental conditions on timescales from decades to hundreds of millennia, as well as direct records of the composition of the atmosphere. Ice cores contain highly detailed continuous stratigraphic records extending from the present to 800 ka BP. A large variety of climate proxies, related to atmospheric and climate changes can be analysed and dated with an accuracy ranging from a few years, for recent centuries, to a few millennia for older records. Over the past two decades, the contribution of ice core studies to the reconstruction and interpretation of past climate changes became fundamental: they allowed the direct measurement of greenhouse gas changes in the past and the detection of rapid climatic changes.

More information is available in the Second Circular or on the Congress website.