NSF-NERC: Geological History Constraints on the Magnitude of Grounding Line Retreat in the Thwaites Glacier System
Description/Abstract
This project contributes to the joint initiative launched by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to substantially improve decadal and longer-term projections of ice loss and sea-level rise originating from Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The Thwaites Glacier system dominates the contribution to sea-level rise from Antarctica. Predicting how this system will evolve in coming decades, and thereby its likely contribution to sea level, requires detailed understanding of how it has responded to changes in climate and oceanographic conditions in the past. This project will provide a record of regional sea-level change by establishing chronologies for raised marine beaches as well as the timing and duration of periods of retreat of Thwaites Glacier during the past 10,000 years by sampling and dating bedrock presently covered by Thwaites Glacier via subglacial drilling. Together with climatic and oceanographic conditions from other records, these will provide boundary conditions for past-to-present model simulations as well as those used to predict future glacier changes under a range of climate scenarios. Specifically, the project will test the hypothesis--implied by existing geological evidence from the region--that present rapid retreat of the Thwaites Glacier system is reversible. The team aims to utilize two approaches: 1. To reconstruct relative sea level during the Holocene, it will map and date raised marine and shoreline deposits throughout Pine Island Bay. Chronological constraints on sea-level change will be provided by radiocarbon dating of organic material in landforms and sediments that are genetically related to past sea level, such as shell fragments, bones of marine fauna, and penguin guano. 2. To obtain geological evidence for past episodes of grounding-line retreat, the team will apply cosmogenic-nuclide exposure-dating of subglacial bedrock. Using drill systems recently developed for subglacial bedrock recovery, the team will obtain subglacial bedrock from sites where ice thickness is dynamically linked to grounding-line position in the Thwaites system (specifically in the Hudson Mountains, and near Mount Murphy). Observation of significant cosmogenic-nuclide concentrations--the team will primarily measure Beryllium-10 and in situ Carbon-14--in these samples would provide direct, unambiguous evidence for past episodes of thinning linked to grounding-line retreat as well as constraints on their timing and duration. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Personnel
Person |
Role |
Venturelli, Ryan A
|
Investigator and contact |
Goehring, Brent
|
Investigator |
Hall, Brenda
|
Investigator |
Campbell, Seth
|
Investigator |
Balco, Gregory
|
Investigator |
Funding
Antarctic Earth Sciences
|
Award # 2317097
|
Antarctic Glaciology
|
Award # 2317097
|
Antarctic Earth Sciences
|
Award # 1738989
|
Antarctic Glaciology
|
Award # 1738989
|
Deployment
Deployment |
Type |
Mt. Murphy
| field camp |
NBP1902 |
ship expedition |
Data Management Plan
None in the Database
Product Level:
0 (raw data)
Datasets
Repository |
Title (link) |
Format(s) |
Status |
R2R |
NBP1902 Expedition data |
Not Provided |
exists |
ICE-D |
Cosmogenic-Nuclide data at ICE-D |
Not Provided |
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Cosmogenic 10Be data and calculated surface exposure ages for 41 cobbles and boulders collected from nunataks adjacent to Larter and Lucchitta glaciers in the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Geochronological data from the Hudson Mountains, Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Laboratory spectral reflectance measurements at VNIR-SWIR wavelengths of 17 rock samples from Mount Murphy, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Cosmogenic in situ 14C data and calculated surface exposure ages for 9 erratic cobbles collected from Mount Murphy, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Orientations of bedrock striations in the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Geomorphological measurements and lithological classifications of 90 erratic cobbles from the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Cosmogenic Be-10 and Al-26 data and calculated surface exposure ages for cobbles collected from a moraine adjacent to Mount Murphy, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Ground-penetrating radar surveys at three nunataks in the Hudson Mountains in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, December 2019 |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Cosmogenic Be-10 data and calculated surface exposure ages from nunataks adjacent to Pine Island Glacier in the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica |
|
exists |
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Center |
Beryllium-10 exposure ages for Pope Glacier from a scoria cone 1.5 km west of Mount Murphy in the Amundsen Sea Embayment |
|
exists |
USAP-DC |
Pine Island Bay Relative Sea-Level Data |
Excel |
exists |
USAP-DC |
200 MHz ground-penetrating radar from Winkie Nunatak, West Antarctica |
SEG-Y |
exists |
USAP-DC |
In situ 14C data from a subglacial bedrock core near Pope and Thwaites glaciers |
Excel |
exists |
USAP-DC |
Ice-penetrating radar data from the northern embayment of the Mt. Murphy massif |
Google Earth; HyperText Markup Language (HTML) |
exists |
USAP-DC |
Firn and Ice Density at Winkie Nunatak |
Microsoft Excel (OpenXML) |
exists |
USAP-DC |
Ice-penetrating radar data from the Thwaites Glacier grounding zone |
Not Provided |
exists |
Publications
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Johnson, J. S., Venturelli, R. A., Balco, G., Allen, C. S., Braddock, S., Campbell, S., … Woodward, J. (2021). Review article: Existing and potential evidence for Holocene grounding-line retreat and readvance in Antarctica. The Cryosphere
(doi:10.5194/tc-2021-360)
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Balco, G., Brown, N., Nichols, K., Venturelli, R.A., Adams, J.R., Braddock, S., Campbell, S., Goehring, B., Johnson, J.S., Rood, D.H., Wilcken, K., Hall, B., Woodward, J. 2023. Reversible ice sheet thinning in the Amundsen Sea Embayment during the Late Holocene, The Cryosphere. First four authors contributed equally to this manuscript
(doi:10.5194/tc-2022-172.)
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Adams, J.R., Johnson, J.S., Roberts, S. J., Mason, P.J., Nichols, K.A., Venturelli, R.A., Wilcken, K., Balco, G., Goehring, B., Hall, B., Woodward, J., Rood, D.H. 2022. New 10Be exposure ages improve Holocene ice sheet thinning history near the grounding line of Pope Glacier, Antarctica, The Cryosphere.
(doi:10.5194/tc-2022-82.)
-
Marschalek, J. W., Thomson, S. N., Hillenbrand, C.-D., Vermeesch, P., Siddoway, C., Carter, A., Nichols, K., Rood, D. H., Venturelli, R. A., Hammond, S. J., Wellner, J., & van de Flierdt, T. (2024). Geological insights from the newly discovered granite of Sif Island between Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. Antarctic Science, 1–24.
(doi:10.1017/s0954102023000287)
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Braddock, S., Venturelli, R. A., Nichols, K., Moravec, E., Boeckmann, G. V., Campbell, S., Balco, G., Ackert, R., Small, D., Johnson, J. S., Dunbar, N., Woodward, J., Mukhopadhyay, S., & Goehring, B. (2024). Lessons learned from shallow subglacial bedrock drilling campaigns in Antarctica. Annals of Glaciology, 1–35.
(doi:10.1017/aog.2024.12)
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Nichols, K. A., Adams, J. R., Brown, K., Creel, R. C., McKenzie, M. A., Venturelli, R. A., Johnson, J. S., Rood, D. H., Wilcken, K., Woodward, J., & Roberts, S. J. (2024). Direct Geologic Constraints on the Timing of Late Holocene Ice Thickening in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica. Geophysical Research Letters, 51(24). Portico.
(doi:10.1029/2024gl110350)
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Johnson, J. S., Woodward, J., Nesbitt, I., Winter, K., Campbell, S., Nichols, K. A., Venturelli, R. A., Braddock, S., Goehring, B. M., Hall, B., Rood, D. H., Balco, G. (2025) Assessing the suitability of sites near Pine Island Glacier for subglacial bedrock drilling aimed at detecting Holocene retreat and readvance. The Cryosphere 19, 303–324
(doi:10.5194/tc-19-303-2025)
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Adams, J. R., Mason, P. J., Roberts, S. J., Rood, D. H., Smellie, J. L., Nichols, K. A., Woodward, J., Johnson, J. S. (2025) Remote mapping of bedrock for future cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating studies in remote unvisited areas of Antarctica. Remote Sensing 17 (2), 314.
(doi:10.3390/rs17020314)
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Jonson, J. S., Nichols, K. A., Riley, T. R., Venturelli, R. A., Hhodgson, D. A., Balco, G., Hall, B., Smith, J. A., Woodward, J. (2025) Glacial geology of the Hudson Mountains, Amundsen Sea sector, West Antarctica. Quaternary Science Reviews.
(doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.109027)
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Walshaw, C.V., Gray, A., Fretwell, P.T., Convey, P., Davey, M.P., Johnson, J.S., Colesie, C. (2024) A remote-sensed baseline of photosynthetic life across Antarctica. Nature Geoscience 17, 755–762.
(doi:10.1038/s41561-024-01492-4)
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Nichols, K.A., Rood, D.H., Venturelli, R.A., Balco, G., Adams, J.R., Guillaume, L., Campbell, S., Goehring, B.M., Hall, B.L., Wilcken, K., Woodward, J., Johnson, J.S. (2023) Offshore-onshore record of Last Glacial Maximum-to-present grounding line retreat at Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica. Geology, 51, 1033-1037, paper (open access).
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Herbert, L., Lepp, A.P., Munevar Garvia, S., Browning, A., Miller, L.E., Wellner, J., Severmann, S., Hillenbrand, C.-D., Johnson, J.S., Sherrell, R.M. (2023) Volcanogenic fluxes of iron from the seafloor in the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica. Marine Chemistry, 104250, paper (open access)
(doi:10.1016/j.marchem.2023.104250)
Platforms and Instruments
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