Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

8 Terrestrial Deglaciation Signatures in East Antarctica

Uday Sharma¹, Yogesh Ray^1,*, and Manish Pandey^2,3

¹ National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, (Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India) Headland Sada, Vasco Da Gama 403804, Goa, India.² University Centre for Research and Development (UCRD), Chandigarh University, Mohali 140413, Punjab, India ³ Department of Civil Engineering, Chandigarh University, Mohali 140413, Punjab, India^* Corresponding author

8.1 Introduction

Since the earliest expeditions to the Antarctic region at the beginning of the 20th century, humans have established many research stations that facilitate extensive scientific studies on the isolated icy continent. The surface of this cold, rugged continent is 97% covered with ice. The inception of glaciation in Antarctica has been long dated back to 34 Ma after its occupation as an isolated continent in the southernmost corner of the globe and global cooling trends across the Eocene–Oligocene transition (Coxall et al., 2005; Lear et al., 2008). In the present day, terrestrial, marine, and ice core signatures of past ice-sheet fluctuations in Antarctic regions provide a holistic window to understand the dynamics of global climatic variation across the planet.

Along with the current decadal-scale changes, understanding the past deglaciation trends in Antarctica is also essential to predict future climatic behavior of ice sheets in the Antarctic region and subsequent global sea-level rise (Suganuma et ...