Summary
Ice cores from coastal East Antarctica provide highly resolved records that capture seasonal variations in a wide range of climate proxies. Precipitation preserved in these ice cores arrives predominantly with high latitude cyclones and is strongly influenced by weather and climate variations in the Southern Ocean. Annually resolved records from Law Dome (LD) currently extend to around 1000 years BP for snow accumulation, water isotopes and trace ion chemistry. These provide proxies for precipitation amount, temperatures and atmospheric circulation, respectively. Shorter records covering the last 100- 200 years provide proxy sea-ice extent. Recent coring at sites several hundred km to the east and west of LD will extend spatial coverage with climate records covering 100-200 years. The LD climate record has demonstrated sensitivity to mid-latitude climate processes with identified connections between the winter Southern Annular Mode and LD sea-salts, and recently, between LD precipitation and southwest Western Australian drought. The latter connection appears to arise from variability in the zonal wave-number three circulation, which together with the SAM variability is likely to be important across southern Australia. Other work in progress suggests a link between summer circulation at LD and ENSO, appearing in the LD record as modulation of sea salt transport. Calibration of these well-dated ice core proxies with meteorological data and synthesis of records across the range of ice core sites offers a powerful tool for exploring climate variability and processes influencing southern Australia and the potential to reconstruct regional climate over much of the past two millennia.