Antarctic climate models could help locate important ice-core records

Ars Technica : To better understand how vulnerable the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) could be to global warming, researchers led by Eric Steig of the University of Washington turned to ice-core records and climate models. Although melting of the WAIS appears to have contributed significantly to sea-level rise during the last interglacial period some 120 000 years ago, the ice-core record is incomplete. So the researchers developed climate models , which depict a thickening of the Antarctic atmosphere in response to the deflating of the landscape due to ice-sheet loss. The models show that melting ice allows winds to bring warmer maritime air from over the Weddell Sea to West Antarctica and parts of East Antarctica and, at the same time, drive colder continental air in the other direction, across the Ross Sea. Not only do the existing ice-core records support this pattern but the computer models are helping the researchers to figure out where the most helpful ice-core samples might come from.