Ocean heat forced West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat after the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is thinning at an accelerating rate, driven by melting at its margins by warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW). However, this understanding is largely based on observations from recent decades, leaving the long-term influence of ocean temperature on WAIS stability uncertain. Here we reconstruct bottom water temperatures and water mass properties over the past 18 kyr using benthic foraminiferal Mg/Ca and δ¹³C records from sediment cores in the Amundsen Sea. Our data indicate that warm CDW occupied the continental shelf between ~ 18.0 and 10.1 kyr BP, coincident with major WAIS retreat from the shelf break to near its present-day grounding-line position along the Marie Byrd Land coast. Bottom waters cooled after ~ 10.1 kyr BP and remained relatively stable thereafter, with no evidence for substantial grounding-line migration. Continued atmospheric warming across West Antarctica until a mid-Holocene thermal maximum (~6–3 kyr BP) without further retreat indicates that ocean heat was the primary driver of WAIS variability since the Last Glacial Maximum.