Abstract

Present climate changes in Antarctica are documented by disintegration of ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula (Prince Gustav, Larsen, or Wilkins Ice Shelves), by West Antarctic ice sheet decay connected with enhanced ice flow velocities, by minor East Antarctic ice build-up and by temperature rise evidenced by meteorological measurements in West Antarctica and Antarctic Peninsula. However, it was shown by different geological and palaeoclimatological studies that the climate has not been stable in Antarctica since the Antarctic massive ice built-up in the early Cenozoic. Three different windows in the northernmost Antarctic Peninsula glacial and climate history will be shown. The first one includes changes that appeared some 5–6 million years ago; the second shows the melting of the Antarctic Peninsula ice at the end of the last Ice Age 12 thousand years ago and the Holocene glacial changes; and the third one documents direct field and remote data of glacier changes during the last 3–4 decades.