Towards radiostratigraphic connectivity between Antarctica’s deep ice cores and ice-sheet margins

Antarctica’s ice cores provide seminal records of past climates and calibration points for ice-sheet modelling, but are, by definition, limited to single locations. However, spatially-widespread radar-imaged internal-reflecting horizons, tied to ice-core age-depth profiles, can be treated as isochrones that may link between ice-core sites, and record a 3D age-depth structure across the Antarctic ice sheets. In 2018, the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research programme formed the AntArchitecture consortium, which has progressively been tracing radiostratigraphy across the Antarctic ice sheets to form a baseline dataset for multiple scientific applications, for example the search for Antarctica’s oldest ice and to reconstruct past mass balance. In this presentation we focus on the use of radiostratigraphy to connect between deep ice-core sites and, in so doing, to calibrate ice-core dating profiles and extend the age-depth profiles into three dimensions and extend knowledge of the age of the ice towards the ice-sheet margins and potential future ice-coring sites. We present our best attempts at radiostratigraphic connections across both the East and West Antarctic ice sheets, and the current state of the art in connecting age-depth profiles between the two ice sheets, calibrated by Antarctica’s main ice cores. We demonstrate that radiostratigraphy is a potent companion to ice cores in the quest to reconstruct past climate and hence reduce uncertainties in projecting future ice-sheet behaviour.