The WArm Climate Stability of West Antarctic ice sheet in the last INterglacial (WACSWAIN)

Recent modelling studies predict that anthropogenic warming could lead to the loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) in the next few centuries, and cause a large rise in sea level. This project aims to discover whether the WAIS was destroyed by similar warming in the last interglacial, as both modelling and indirect evidence suggest.

The five-year European Research Council (ERC) funded WACSWAIN project, led by Prof. Eric Wolff, involved colleagues in the Department of Earth Sciences and at the British Antarctic Survey. During field seasons in the West Antarctic, the team drilled two new ice cores, a 650-metre-long core was successfully retrieved from Skytrain Ice Rise in the 2018-2019 field season, and a rapid access drill was used to retrieve ice chips to a depth of 322 metres at Sherman Island in early 2020. These cores have been analysed in Cambridge to understand past retreats of the ice sheet, allowing models for ice sheet cover on the continent over the past 130,000 years to be tested. Efforts to analyze and interpret the data are ongoing.