RII Track-4: NSF: Building Linkages: Assessing the Importance of Terrestrial Climate in Deglacial Ice Sheet Dynamics through Collaborative Research Capacity Building

As the world’s climate continues to warm, it is increasingly important to understand how the melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise. Specifically, as the ice sheets retreat over land, it becomes imperative to understand the role local climate has on the melting of ice sheet margins. Thus, the goals of this project are threefold.

Initially, the researcher will reconstruct records of past climate (temperature and precipitation) in New England. The reconstructed past climate will be from approximately 13,000-years ago when a large ice sheet was retreating under analogous warming conditions. To accomplish this, the research team will analyze organic molecules from plants and bacteria left behind in lake sediments and whose form and composition reflect past changes in temperature and precipitation.

Second, the PI will compare these new high-resolution climate records to existing records of changes in ice sheet margin activity to elucidate the role of local climate on the melting and retreat of large ice sheets. Understanding how local climate impacted the melting of past ice sheets will help forecast how continued climate change will drive melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Better understanding and predictions of melting ice sheet contributions to sea level rise are vital in helping coastal areas worldwide to prepare for and mitigate associated consequences. The third and final goal of the project includes capacity building at a small rural institution and research experience for undergraduate students, helping to prepare the next generation of earth and climate scientists.

This Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-4 EPSCoR Research Fellows (RII Track-4:NSF) project would provide a fellowship to a Teaching Faculty member and training for an undergraduate student at Plymouth State University. This work would be conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. The world's ice sheets are projected to continue to shrink under future warming conditions, with potentially wide-ranging and catastrophic global consequences.

However, the role of terrestrial climate change on ice sheet fluctuations, especially during times of ice margin retreat, remains poorly understood. While changes in ice sheet mass balance and ice dynamics are known to drive ice-margin fluctuations on millennial to multi-millennial timescales, it is hypothesized that more local, terrestrial climate plays a significant role in shorter timescale ice margin fluctuations.

A better understanding of the impact of local climate on past ice margin behavior is necessary to understand how modern ice sheet margins will respond to continued climate change. The researcher will pilot the generation of new, high-resolution temperature and hydroclimate records following the deglaciation of the northeastern United States by the Laurentide Ice Sheet following the Last Glacial Maximum.

Temperature and hydroclimate will be reconstructed using branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) and the hydrogen isotopic composition (δ2H) of precipitation from preserved leaf waxes, respectively, using sediment cores (in-hand and to-be-collected) from central New England. The researcher will accomplish this through extended visits to two laboratory facilities at the University of Colorado Boulder and in collaboration with their PIs and staff.

These new records will be compared to the existing North American Varve Chronology which contains a detailed record of LIS retreat and ice margin fluctuations through the study area.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.