Exploring East Antarctica from past to future

While most of West Antarctic ice shelves are thinning due to ongoing oceanic warming, East Antarctic ice shelves, except a few ones, are apparently more stable. East Antarctica represents most of the ice volume stored on the Antarctic continent. Understanding its potential response to climate warming through its history can inform the implementation of adaptation plans and associated costs. Combining geological observations and knowledge with the glaciological and climatic observations of the past decades can help understand how East Antarctica responds to climate warming in general. Paleoclimate have now the potential to provide insights on processes and interactions, where present-day glaciological and oceanic observations networks fail, for example, within cavities. With the technological progresses and the advances in understanding of ice-ocean or ice-atmosphere interactions, our understanding of the role of Antarctica in the climate system has made some progresses. But numerous knowledge gaps remain and rely on our capacity to set-up successful expeditions to explore the mostly unknow East Antarctic margins.