Imagine a vegetated Antarctica…
In a series of projects we explore warm times in the past, when there was plant life on Antarctica – conditions that may return with future warming.
The mid Miocene was a time with greenhouse gas levels that were about the level projected for the end of this century. Evidence from the ANDRILL2 core indicates that plants grew on the margins of Antarctica (Warny et al., Geology, 2009). Evidence from plant leaf wax hydrogen isotopic composition reconstructs the hydrological changes that accompanied the vegetation expansion. This project integrated the leaf wax results with isotope-enabled climate model experiments on the hydrological cycle.
Feakins, S.J., Warny, S. and Lee, J.E., (2012) Hydrologic cycling over Antarctica during the Middle Miocene warming, Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/NGEO1498. data, article, press
Using similar approaches Late Eocene conditions were explored in the SHALDRIL-2 core from the tip of the Antarctic peninsula, with leaf wax, pollen, and climate model data, to see what hydrological and climatic conditions were like before the onset of full Antarctic glaciation 34 million years ago.
Feakins, S.J., Warny, S., DeConto, R. M., 2014. Snapshot of cooling and drying before onset of Antarctic Glaciation, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 404, 154-166. article
An NSF award allows us to pursue new insights into the last vestiges of vegetation on the East Antarctic margins, before full Antarctic glaciation. We are actively studying legacy IODP and ODP cores from Prydz Bay with biomarker work in the Feakins’ lab led by then PhD student Emily Tibbett (PhD in 2022). Together with collaborators we reconstruct multi-proxy reconstructions of conditions leading up to the climate transition at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, and compare these to climate model simulations.
Tibbett, E.J.*, Burls, N.J., Hutchinson, D.K., Feakins, S.J. Proxy-Model Comparison for the Eocene-Oligocene Transition in Southern High Latitudes, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004496. article ESSOAR preprint Github code Zenodo proxy synthesis Zenodo model code
Tibbett, E.J.*, Warny, S., Tierney, J.E., Wellner, J.S., Feakins, S.J. Cenozoic Antarctic Peninsula temperatures and glacial erosion signals from a multi-proxy biomarker study, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004430. article data
Duffy, M.*, Tibbett, E.J.*, Smith, C., Warny, S., Feakins, S.J., Escarguel, G., Askin, R., Leventer, A. and Shevenell, A. Snapshots of pre-glacial paleoenvironmental conditions along the Sabrina Coast, East Antarctica: new palynological and biomarker evidence, Geobios, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geobios.2021.09.001. article data
Tibbett, E.J.*, Scher, H.D., Warny, S., Tierney, J.E., Passchier, S., Feakins, S.J. Late Eocene record of hydrology and temperature from Prydz Bay, East Antarctica, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020PA004204. article data