Summary
Although many Quaternary records have allowed the study of major glacial-interglacial change in the Southern Ocean, Holocene records from deep-sea cores are few and far between and are currently limited to the South Atlantic. Low sedimentation rates combined with deep seafloors, and the high nutrient, low-chlorophyll nature of the Southern Ocean are all in part responsible for the lack of decadal-to-centennial resolution records in the open-ocean environment. Our study is focused on an array of sedimentological, micropalaeontological and geochemical analyses conducted on the first open-ocean, high-resolution core study of Quaternary-Holocene sea-ice variability in the Southeast Indian Ocean; Eltanin piston core 27-23. In this presentation the results of sea ice estimates derived from diatom remains and tied to other physical and geological proxies will reveal the change from a sea-ice covered glacial maximum and deglacial transition through to the modern day. We report evidence of several Holocene ice edge advance episodes out to 59°S, inclusive of the Antarctic Climatic Reversal. The addition of this record to existing, lower-resolution, sea-ice histories from regional cores MD88-787 and SO136-111 and in context to modern oceanographic fronts enables scenarios of regional palaeoceanographic change to be refined.