Tracing englacial layers between Dome C and Talos Dome, East Antarctica

Understanding ice-sheet behaviour in relation to changing climate forcing is integral to projecting sea-level rise scenarios under future climate change. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is the single largest freshwater store on the planet, yet its potential contribution to future sea-level rise remains poorly understood, mainly due to a dearth of accessible palaeoenvironmental constraints to inform ice-sheet modelling. Englacial stratigraphy imaged in radio-echo sounding and dated at intersections with deep ice cores provides information about palaeoclimatic constraints on the ice sheet that can be used to validate numerical modelling. Here, we utilise an extensive dataset of radio-echo sounding, acquired across Wilkes Subglacial Basin and encompassing 61,000 km of profiles, to investigate the englacial architecture of the area. We trace several englacial horizons covering Wilkes Subglacial Basin, and make the first direct englacial stratigraphic connection between Dome C and Talos Dome, enabling us to place provisional age-depth constraints against the ice. The traced stratigraphy also connects with previously traced englacial layers farther across East Antarctica to Dome C, Vostok and the South Pole. These data will be supplied to models to better constrain past ice flow and stability in Wilkes Subglacial Basin.