Tectonic, Climatic, and Cryospheric Evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

For millennia, Antarctica has been a frozen continent, a land of ice and snow where complex life persists rather than thrives. But Antarctica has not always been this way. Millions of years ago the southern continent was teeming with life. Changing oceans and a plummeting atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration drove a dramatic evolution of the Antarctic continent. To provide a record of these ancient climatic shifts, the 2005–2006 SHALDRIL drilling program collected sediment cores from the bed of the iceberg‐filled seas off the Antarctic Peninsula. In the AGU book Tectonic, Climatic, and Cryospheric Evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula, editors John B. Anderson and Julia S. Wellner draw on the findings garnered from SHALDRIL to explore the changing Antarctic Peninsula. In this interview, Eos talks to John B. Anderson.