Table Of Content

The Icy Planet Frontispiece The Geological Timescale for the Phanerozoic Eon and the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon (in millions of years, rounded up or down) Era Period Epoch Base Age ×106 yrs Cenozoic *1 Quaternary Holocene 0.0117 Pleistocene 2.6 Neogene Pliocene 5.3 Miocene 23 Paleogene Oligocene 34 Eocene 56 Palaeocene 66 Mesozoic Cretaceous Upper 100 Lower 145 Jurassic Upper 163 Middle 174 Lower 201 Triassic Upper 237 Middle 247 Lower 252 Paleozoic Permian Upper 259 Middle 273 Lower 299 Carboniferous Upper 323 Lower 359 Devonian Upper 383 Middle 393 Lower 419 Silurian 444 Ordovician 485 Cambrian 541 Proterozoic Neoproterozoic 1000 From Cohen, K.M., Finney, S.C., Gibbard, P.L., and Fan, J.- X. (2013; updated 2018) The ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart. Episodes 36, 199–2 04. The Icy Planet Saving Earth’s Refrigerator Colin Summerhayes Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022946541 ISBN 978–0 – 19–7 62798– 3 DOI: 10.1093/o so/ 9780197627983.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America This book is dedicated to all our children, grandchildren, and great-g randchildren and their descendants, who will have to live with the consequences of the overheating of our atmosphere and our ocean and the melting of our ice through the global pollution we and our predecessors have caused by the seemingly innocuous act of burning coal, oil, and natural gas. I would also like to pay tribute here to some of the often overlooked female scientists who are making a huge difference in studies of polar climate and past climates (which provide examples of what may happen if we fail to limit global overheating), in the hope that it will encourage yet more young women to enter these challenging research fields to follow these great examples: Jane Francis, Maureen Raymo, Valérie Masson-D elmotte, Dorthe Dahl-J ensen, and Robin Bell. Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xvii 1. Introduction 1 Ice— The Canary in the Coal Mine 2 Let’s Talk about Ice 3 Entering a New Geological Era—Th e Anthropocene 10 The Role of Ice in Earth’s Climate System 12 What Is Global Warming Doing to the Planet’s Icy Places? 19 Connections 20 Why Should We Care? 24 Experiencing the Icy Regions on a Virtual Journey 26 2. Icehouse Climates 28 Snowball Earth 28 The Icehouse Worlds of Paleozoic Time 38 The Mesozoic Greenhouse Interlude 45 The Cenozoic Icehouse and the Modern World 52 3. East Antarctica— The World’s Biggest Ice Cube 64 Heading South 64 Ice Runways and Air Networks 69 Ice and Climate 76 A Drifting Continent 86 Buried under Ice 88 Melting Ice Shelves 90 Emperors on Ice 92 A Cooling Ocean 97 Science on Ice 98 Tourism 106 A New Ice Runway 108 Lakes and Polynyas 109 4. West Antarctica and Dry Valleys 118 Early Explorers of the Ross Sea 118 Ross Sea Tourism 128 Dry Valleys 133 Subantarctic Islands 135 The Changing Climate 138 viii Contents Numerical Models and Climate Forecasts 142 Drilling into Climate History 146 5. The Antarctica Peninsula, the Falklands, and South Georgia 152 South to the Peninsula 152 Patagonian Glaciers 156 Antarctic Expedition 157 Drake Passage 158 Icebergs and Pack Ice 164 Old Volcanoes and Adélie Penguins 169 Into the Caldera 174 Chinstraps and Elephants 176 Fjords and Islands 179 Paradise Harbour 182 Palmer Station, an American Outpost 183 Lemaire Channel and the Iceberg Graveyard 187 Glaciers and Ice Shelves 190 The Falkland Islands and South Georgia 193 Island Arcs, Trenches, and Volcanoes 200 Back across the Drake 204 Signs of Climate Change 205 6. The Arctic 209 Arctic Glaciation—B eginnings 209 The Land of Trolls 217 Svalbard 222 The Land of Ice and Fire 225 The Ice Plateau 229 North America’s Laurentide Ice Sheet 245 Alaska 248 Siberia 252 A Frozen Sea 255 Arctic Warming 261 7. The Third Pole— Mountain Ice 275 The Alpine Refrigerator 276 The Growth and Decay of Alpine Ice 279 Shrinking Glaciers Worldwide 285 A Close Acquaintance with Alpine Ice and Snow 291 The Glaciers of the Pennine Alps 297 Mountain Ice and Water 300 8. Rising Seas 304 Sea Level through Time 305 Rising Seas 311 Coastal Damage 316 Subsidence, Uplift, History, and Forecasts 319 Contents ix 9. Our Future 326 Losing Our Refrigerator 326 Coastal Impacts 332 Unintentional Planetary Engineering 334 Population, Energy, and Climate 336 Consequences 338 Intentional Planetary Engineering 341 UN Guidance from Glasgow 348 Cooling the Climate—T echnological Solutions 351 The Nuclear Option 365 Adaptation 368 Geoengineering 369 Linking Global Warming and Biodiversity 371 What Can Individuals Do? 373 Closure 379 10. Epilogue 383 Sustainable Development 383 Economics, Ideology, and the Environment 386 Solutions 392 Where Next? 395 Appendix 1: List of Common Acronyms 401 Appendix 2: List of Figure Sources and Attributions 403 Notes 405 Index 439