Speaker: Shuai Yan, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington
Title: Probing Antarctica’s Deepest Secrets Through Geophysical Exploration and Numerical Modeling
Host: Duncan Young
Abstract: The NSF Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (NSF COLDEX) was funded starting in 2021 to explore Antarctica for the oldest ice cores, with the goal of advancing our understanding of the evolution and future of Earth’s climate system. Achieving this goal requires understanding “deep” in two senses: Antarctica’s deep-time evolution and the deep structure of the ice sheet, where interactions with the solid Earth play a major role in the long-term preservation of old ice. As part of this effort, NSF COLDEX has coordinated two seasons of airborne geophysical surveys over the Dome A–South Pole corridor in East Antarctica during the 2022–23 and 2023–24 field seasons, and one season of follow-up ground-based geophysical survey in the 2024–25 field season. These new geophysical datasets have in turn informed numerical modeling studies of ice-sheet evolution and basal processes.
In this presentation, I will share recent progress from work analyzing airborne radar data and integrating these data in ice-flow models. I will begin by discussing what we have learned about the basal conditions, including spatial heterogeneity in geothermal heat flow and the coupling between basal ice and subglacial geology. I will then share new insights into ice history, particularly the persistence of surface scour zones, which may reflect the long-term stability of ice-flow conditions and surface forcing, and temporal changes in surface accumulation rate, which may provide clues to the broader climate evolution of this region. I will conclude by introducing ongoing work inspired by these findings.