Drift sediments on the West Antarctic continental margin (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program proposal 732)

Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) proposal 732 advocates recovery of cores spanning the Neogene and Quaternary from sediment drifts on the West Antarctic continental margin. The primary objectives are to establish high-resolution age models for the cores by using relative palaeomagnetic intensity records and to exploit the full potential of these unique palaeoenvironmental archives. Here we present existing data sets from sediment cores collected from West Antarctic drifts (including target sites of proposal 732), which highlight the potential of the drift sediments for reconstructing changes in Antarctic ice-sheet size and palaeoceanographic changes in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. We demonstrate that studies of the drift sediments can help address important science questions, for example, whether or not the largely marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed under the natural climatic fluctuations of the late Quaternary