Siple Dome () is an

ice dome Glacier morphology, or the form a glacier takes, is influenced by temperature, precipitation, topography, and other factors. The goal of glacial morphology is to gain a better understanding of glaciated landscapes and the way they are shaped. Ty ...

approximately 100 km wide and 100 km long, located 130 km east of

Siple Coast Siple Coast () is the middle portion of the relatively ill-defined coast along the east side of the Ross Ice Shelf, between the north end of Gould Coast () and the south end of Shirase Coast (). The area was originally called Kirton Coast, but was ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

. Charles Bentley and Robert Thomas established a "strain rosette" on this feature to determine ice movement in 1973–74. They referred to the feature as Siple Dome because of its proximity to

Siple Dome ice core

The Siple Dome

ice core An ice core is a core sample that is typically removed from an ice sheet or a high mountain glacier. Since the ice forms from the incremental buildup of annual layers of snow, lower layers are older than upper ones, and an ice core contains ic ...

project (79.468° S 112.086° W) was conducted by the

United States National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

. The deepest ice was recovered in 1999 from 974 m, with an age of 97,600 years. It is best known for the poorly-explained steps in water isotopes during the deglacial, which are unique to this core and may indicate a rapid decrease in the surface elevation of the adjoining ice streams during the deglacial and a record of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Chief Scientist was

Kendrick Taylor Kendrick Cashman Taylor, Jr. is a climate change researcher working with ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. While a Research Professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, he was the Chief Scientist for the Siple Dome and WAIS Divi ...

Radar surveys of internal ice structure

In the 1990s a team from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

and St Olaf College surveyed the ice, measuring thickness and determining internal structure, finding evidence for the operation of the

Raymond Effect Raymond Effect is a flow effect in ice sheets, occurring at flow divides, which gives rise to disturbances in the stratigraphy, showing unusual arches or anticlines called ''Raymond Arches''. The stratigraphy is detected by radio-echo sounding. Th ...

. They also found that the ice had a maximum thickness of around 1000 m.

In popular culture

* A documentary on climate change research associated with the Siple Dome ice core was produced by Nova: Warnings from the Ice, 1998. The documentary explains how reductions in Antarctic ice mass can raise sea level. * Siple Dome is referenced in the song "Fall of Sipledome" by

thrash metal Thrash metal (or simply thrash) is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its overall aggression and often fast tempo.Kahn-Harris, Keith, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'', pp. 2–3, 9. Oxford: Berg, 2007, . ...

band Testament (on their 1999 album '' The Gathering'').

Climate

The climate is

ice cap In glaciology, an ice cap is a mass of ice that covers less than of land area (usually covering a highland area). Larger ice masses covering more than are termed ice sheets. Description Ice caps are not constrained by topographical features ...

( Köppen: ''ET''), as is most of the continent. Without marine moderation and a few hundred meters above sea level, it has one of the harshest winters on the continent outside the Antarctic plateaus. Unlike Alert, NU at slightly higher latitude and positive high averages during summer, in Siple Dome temperatures remain below freezing during the afternoon of the warmer months on average.

References

{{Airports in Antarctica Ice caps of Antarctica Bodies of ice of Marie Byrd Land

Siple Dome ice core

Radar surveys of internal ice structure

In popular culture

Climate

See also

Further reading

References