Abstract

The Antarctic Peninsula is warming rapidly. This warming is responsible for increased glacier and ice-shelf melting, ice-shelf collapse, glacier retreat and acceleration. If we want to put these much-publicised recent events into their wider context, we have to look back in time through the Quaternary for evidence of former ice volume, controls on ice-volume changes and past rates and magnitudes of change. The Antarctic Peninsula is a good place to do this because it contains a well-preserved record of marine and terrestrial glaciations. In this talk, I will present new evidence from fieldwork on James Ross Island about the location and extent of former ice-steams that impinged on the island. I will also present new cosmogenic isotope dates from erratic boulders transported onto James Ross Island from the Antarctic Peninsula and comment on when this former ice stream existed.