DANGER DML - Deciphering the evolution of an East ANtarctic drainage system over the last Glacial cycle in westERn Dronning Maud Land

• Applicant: Dr. Steven Franke
• Subject Area: Geophysics
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 506043073

An understanding of Antarctic ice-sheet behaviour is critical for evaluating the role of the polar ice caps in the climate system and for constraining the global impact of sea-level rise in a future warming climate. Critical for assessing the potential future behaviour of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is to document how it changed over the last glacial cycle (~ 0 – 115 thousand years ago) and to identify areas that were vulnerable to these changes. However, there is a lack of suitable observations and models that can realistically simulate East Antarctica's ice-sheet evolution. This deficiency will be addressed in DANGER DML. The overall goal of the project is to better understand how a major sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet reacted to ice-sheet changes during the last glacial cycle by applying a novel structural analysis method for internal layers in the ice to reconstruct ice-flow patterns of the past. This enables a new way to investigate the past ice-dynamic behaviour of a major drainage basin in Dronning Maud Land (Jutulstraumen and its neighboring catchments) over the last glacial cycle and in particular the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Holocene.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position