Summary
The Antarctic ice sheet holds a wealth of information on past climate variability, locked away in successive layers buried by further snowfall. In the coastal regions of Antarctica, snowfall rates can be high enough to hold layers of climate data on monthly, or better, time resolution. This information is accessed by ice core drilling, and through analysis and calibration with the instrumental record, provides proxy climate records. Australian ice core research has focussed on high resolution coastal ice core records, particularly from Law Dome, southeast of Casey station. Currently these records extent 700 years, at seasonal resolution, and these are being extends to cover the last 2000 years. This is a particularly important time period and one of the knowledge gaps highlighted in IPCC AR4, which stated "that Southern Hemisphere climate reconstructions are limited by sparcity and quantity of well resolved paleoclimate records". This presentation will provide an overview of Australian Antarctic ice core work to date, with an emphasis on those climate records most relevant to Australia. A number of existing proxy records will be presented including sea ice in the southern ocean, the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and rainfall in Southwest Western Australia. Ongoing work into emerging and potential climate proxies will also be covered.