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Climatic and tectonic drivers of late Oligocene Antarctic ice volume

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 819–825 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Cenozoic evolution of the Antarctic ice sheets is thought to be driven primarily by long-term changes in radiative forcing, but the tectonic evolution of Antarctica may also have played a substantive role. While deep-sea foraminiferal oxygen isotope records provide a combined measure of global continental ice volume and ocean temperature, they do not provide direct insights into non-radiative influences on Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics. Here we present an Antarctic compilation of Cenozoic upper-ocean temperature for the Ross Sea and offshore Wilkes Land, generated by membrane lipid distributions from archaea. We find trends of ocean temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen isotopes largely co-vary. However, this relationship is less clear for the late Oligocene, when high-latitude cooling occurred despite interpretation of oxygen isotopes suggesting global warming and ice-volume loss. We propose this retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet occurred in response to a tectonically driven marine transgression, with warm surface waters precluding marine-based ice-sheet growth. Marine ice-sheet expansion occurred only when ocean temperatures further cooled during the Oligocene–Miocene transition, with cold orbital conditions and low atmospheric carbon dioxide. Our results support a threshold response to atmospheric carbon dioxide, below which Antarctica’s marine ice sheets grow, and above which ocean warming exacerbates their retreat.

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Fig. 1: Map of the drill core and sample locations used in this study.
Fig. 2: SST compilation from Ross Sea and Wilkes Land sample sites.
Fig. 3: Climate indicators across the late Oligocene–early Miocene climate transition.

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Data availability

Datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in Supplementary Data Tables 1–4 and online at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.9468018990.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for access to samples from the IODP core repository at Texas A&M University for DSDP Sites 270 and 274 and to the Alfred Wegener Institute for access to samples from the Cape Roberts Project. This study was funded via an Antarctica New Zealand Sir Robin Irvine PhD Scholarship, Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research Fellowship and Rutherford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (RFT-VUW1804-PD) awarded to B.D., with additional funding by the Royal Society Te Apārangi Marsden Fund award MFP-VUW1808 (B.D. and R.M.) and the New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment through the Antarctic Science Platform (ANTA1801) and contract C05X1001 (B.D., R.M., R.L., T.N. and J.G.P.). The Natural Environment Research Council funded J.B. (standard grant Ne/I00646X/1). J.B. and T.D.J. also acknowledge support from Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/P013112/1. D.K.K. was supported by US National Science Foundation award OCE-1326927. The authors are grateful for support from IODP and support in kind from the University of Birmingham and Yale University. We thank S. Schouten (NIOZ) for laboratory support and assistance with temperature data and J. Super for assistance with sample analysis while at Yale University.

Author information

Author notes

  1. S. Krishnan

    Present address: CICERO Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo, Norway

  2. C. Kraus

    Present address: Beca Ltd., Wellington, New Zealand

  3. D. K. Kulhanek

    Present address: Institute of Geosciences, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

  4. H. Moossen

    Present address: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

  5. V. Willmott

    Present address: International Cooperation Unit, Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany

  6. G. T. Ventura

    Present address: Department of Geology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    B. Duncan, R. McKay, R. Levy, T. Naish & C. Kraus

  2. GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    R. Levy, J. G. Prebble, C. Clowes & G. T. Ventura

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, Marine Palynology and Paleoceanography, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    F. Sangiorgi & F. Hoem

  4. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    S. Krishnan & C. Warren

  5. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    T. Dunkley Jones, H. Moossen & J. Bendle

  6. Centre for Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall, UK

    E. Gasson

  7. International Ocean Discovery Program, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    D. K. Kulhanek

  8. Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    S. R. Meyers

  9. Department of Marine Organic Biogeochemistry, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Burg (Texel), the Netherlands

    V. Willmott

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B.D, R.M., J.B., R.L. and T.N. designed the research. B.D. processed samples for DSDP 270, DSDP 274 and CRP-2/2A. S.K. conducted analysis on DSDP 270, DSDP 274 and CRP-2/2A. F.S. processed samples and conducted analysis on AND-2A. F.H. processed samples and conducted analysis on additional samples for DSDP 274. V.W. processed samples and conducted analysis on AND-1B, CIROS-1 and the McMurdo Erratics. C.W. processed samples and conducted analysis on AND-1B. J.G.P. and C.C. developed the age model for CIROS-1. S.R.M. contributed statistical analyses. E.G. provided ice-volume model output and advised on interpretation. T.D.J. assisted with temperature calibration interpretations. D.K.K. and C.K. assisted with sedimentological and environmental interpretations for DSDP 270. H.M. advised on laboratory processing and data interpretation. G.T.V. advised on GDGT data interpretation. B.D. created the figures and wrote the text with assistance from all authors, in particular R.M., J.B., R.L. and T.N.

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Correspondence to B. Duncan.

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Nature Geoscience thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Age model for CIROS-1.

Age model for CIROS-1, based on the paleo-magnetic record from Wilson et al. (1998)59 and new biostratigraphic events described in Supplementary Data Table 1. The preferred age model is shown in green (model 1), as described in Methods section.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information, Table 1 and Figs. 1–8.

Supplementary Data

Supplementary Data Tables 1–4.

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Duncan, B., McKay, R., Levy, R. et al. Climatic and tectonic drivers of late Oligocene Antarctic ice volume. Nat. Geosci. 15, 819–825 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01025-x

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