Antarctica in a warming world: Lessons from the past to inform the future

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Presenter

Dr. Anna Ruth Halberstadt
Assistant Professor
Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
Jackson School of Geosciences
The University of Texas at Austin

Description

The future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is deeply uncertain because modern and projected CO₂ concentrations are unprecedented during human existence. We therefore turn to geologic records, which provide a crucial glimpse of ice-sheet dynamics under fundamentally different climate states. I integrate marine and terrestrial datasets with numerical ice-sheet models to reconstruct how Antarctica behaved during past warm periods -- including the Pliocene, when temperatures and CO₂ levels were similar to those expected in the coming centuries, and the last deglaciation, when the ice sheet retreated rapidly as the planet warmed. By systematically comparing model simulations with geological evidence, I aim to reconstruct past ice-sheet behavior to ultimately reduce uncertainty in projections of future sea level rise.