Looking back to the future: Palaeoclimate studies in Antarctica

Abstract

Antarctica has not always been a frozen continent covered in large ice sheets. It has experienced vastly different climates, ranging from tropical to polar, over hundreds of millions of years. As climate changed, so did the types of plants and animals, the amount of ice, the composition of the air and water, and the geological processes depositing sediments. Traces of these changes became preserved in layers of rock and ice that accumulated over time. Detailed studies of these layers allow scientists to produce a picture of, or to reconstruct, environments and climate conditions that existed in the past and piece together how and why they changed.