Variations of the Ice Margins in East Antarctica

Since THE last century, glaciers over most of the earth have been shrinking. A mass of evidence of his trend has been collected by Ahlmann in comprehensive survey of glacier variations,1 while other writers, too numerous to mention, have brought forward proof of recent glacier recessions in Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, and the Arctic regions. Since about 1940-50, however, there are signs that the recession has become less general in the Northern Hemisphere and there is some evidence that the temperature rise in the Arctic culminated about 1940.* Glacial recession has been widespread throughout the Arctic and Sub-arctic, and numerous examples have been reported from Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Jan Mayen, Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Norway, and the outflow glaciers of the Greenland ice cap. It would seem reasonable, then, to consider the possibility of some corresponding process in Antarctica and, indeed, some reports 3 give the im? pression that ice recession was occurring in west Antarctica in 1940. Further reports of recent glacier retreat at Heard Island have been made by several members of the A.N.A.R.E. (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions). Against this, how? ever, Schytt4 was able to state that no appreciable thinning of the ice had occurred in Dronning Maud Land for many years prior to 1950. In these circumstances the writer, while working at Mawson with the A.N.A.R.E. during the International Geophysical Year, approached the question of ice margin variations in east Antarctica with an open mind. The studies in this field were divided into two broad categories: an attempt to show whether or not there had been fluctuations of the ice margins during the past century or so, and a search for evidence of changes on a larger time scale, i.e. post-Pleistocene variations. These will be considered in turn

Climatology · Geography · Physical geography · Cryospheric studies and observations · Geology · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Oceanography · Polar Research and Ecology

• Progress report on the Antarctic ice sheet

  Open Access•G De Q Robin•Polar Record•1960

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