IODP Expedition 382: Iceberg Alley and South Falkland Slope Ice and Ocean Dynamics

Expedition 382 will be drilling two 600-m deep sites in Dove Basin and Pirie Basin (Scotia Sea, SW Atlantic) to reconstruct the evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) through major Late Neogene transitions (Middle Miocene glacial intensification of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, mid-Pliocene warm interval, Late Pliocene glacial intensification of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, mid-Pleistocene transition, warm interglacials of the last 800 kyr, and glacial terminations).

This will provide the first spatially integrated record of variability in iceberg flux from Iceberg Alley, where a substantial number of Antarctic icebergs exit into the warmer Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). This will (a) constrain iceberg flux during key times of AIS evolution since the Middle Miocene glacial intensification of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, (b) provide material to determine regional sources of AIS mass loss, address interhemispheric phasing of ice-sheet and climate events, and the relation of AIS variability to sea level, (c) provide information on Drake Passage throughflow, meridional overturning in the Southern Ocean, water-mass changes, CO₂ transfer via wind-induced upwelling, sea-ice variability, bottom water outflow from the Weddell Sea, Antarctic weathering inputs, and changes in oceanic and atmospheric fronts in the vicinity of the ACC, and (d) provide dust proxy records to reconstruct changes in the Southern Hemisphere westerlies to evaluate climate-dust coupling since the Pliocene, its potential role in iron fertilization and atmospheric CO₂ drawdown during glacials. This expedition will also core a sediment drift on the Falkland slope to obtain subantarctic multi-proxy intermediate water depth records of millennial to orbital scale variability in the ocean, atmosphere, nutrients, productivity and ice-sheet dynamics in the SW Atlantic through at least the last 1 Ma. 

Mr Shubham Tripathi, an Indian Scientist from NCPOR, Goa is sailing onboard JOIDES Resolution as a Sedimentologist. The 60 day long expedition led by Co-chiefs Michael Weber (Germany) & Maureen Raymo (USA) besides ~30 other scientists from different countries flagged off from Punta Arenas, Chile on 20^th March 2019.