HOLOCLIP - Holocene climate variability at high-southern latitudes: an integrated perspective

HOLOCLIP is a European Science Foundation /European Polar Board PolarCLIMATE initiative (http://www.esf.org/research-areas/polar-sciences/polarclimate.html). The PolarCLIMATE programme has contributed to the development of a strategic common vision for Polar Climate research and is the first step towards joint implementation of programmes and fully utilising research stations and climate observatories in the Arctic and Antarctic. The funding in the PolarCLIMATE Project is by national research funding agency.

HOLOCLIP aims to bring together the ice core, the sediment core and the modelling scientific communities to understand the processes linking different components of the climate system and linking climatic response to external forcing over the Holocene. High-latitudes are particularly interesting places to document natural climate variability since: (1) every component of the climate system interacts in these regions in a still poorly-constrained and non-linear way; (2) changes are amplified compared to low latitude environments; (3) Antarctica and its surrounding are characterized by a strong regional variability. Existing geological records, glacial records and model experiments have highlighted differences in the evolution of the climate as a function of the area. The areas on which the European research efforts have been concentrated over the past decades are suited for integrating existing ice and marine records, in terms of amount and quality of collected materials.

The investigated areas (black boxes) are reported on a map showing the trend of annual mean sea-ice concentration over the period 1980-2000 from observations (Rayner et al. 2003) (units are per decade). The red dots are deep-ice core locations. Modified from Goosse et al. (2008).

Key areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and their marine surroundings have been selected: 1) Western Ross Sea, Oates-George V-Adelie Lands including Dome C ice drainage basin, 2) Prydz Bay, 3) Dronning Maud Land and 4) Antarctic Peninsula-Scotia Sea.