Warming-induced retreat of West Antarctic glaciers weakened carbon sequestration ability but increased mercury enrichment.

ABSTRACT: The Southern Ocean, one of Earth's most productive areas, is widely recognized as a major sink for atmospheric carbon and mercury, tightly coupling primary production with the sedimentary sequestration of these elements. The impacts of climate warming on these processes, however, remain unclear. Here, we utilize 20 sediment cores from the Ross Sea, a representative ice-shelf sea in West Antarctica, to examine how Holocene warming and extensive glacial retreat influenced carbon and mercury sequestration. We find that organic carbon (OC) burial has been relatively constant over the past 12,000 years, whereas mercury burial in the Ross Embayment and open ocean exhibited three- and eightfold increases, respectively. Carbon isotopes and accumulation profiles suggest warming boosted glacial- and

SUBMITTER: Zhou C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11842605 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature