Improving Antarctic Ice-sheet Histories During and Following the Last Glacial Maximum with Cosmogenic 14C

This thesis focuses on the use of carbon-14 for improving Antarctic glacial histories of the last 25,000 years. I use an emerging technique that measures radioactive elements that accumulate in rocks at the Earth's surface to advance our knowledge of this timeframe. Understanding the loss of ice from Antarctica in response to increased temperatures and sea levels over this period enhances our understanding of the response of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to climate change, enabling better predictions of future ice-sheet change. This can be accomplished by determining past volumes and extents of the AIS and how they changed over time.