| Reconstructing past variability of the Antarctic ice sheets is essential to understand their response to future climate change and to anticipate their contribution to global sea-level change. Recent satellite observations show that ice-mass loss has accelerated not only from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet but also from some sectors of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS). However, uncertainties in past ice-sheet reconstructions, especially for the EAIS, impede validation of ice sheet and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models, and estimations of ice mass change based on satellite measurements. Here, we present a new deglacial chronology based on surface exposure dating of erratic rock samples from Gjelsvikfjella in the drainage basin of Jutulstraumen ice stream, central Dronning Maud Land (DML), East Antarctica. A total of 39 cosmogenic 10Be exposure ages from two nunataks (Grotfjellet and Rabben) show a clear clustering around 5.7-8.4 ka. Based on the exposure ages and a new high-resolution ice sheet model over the Jutulstraumen catchment, we suggest that the EAIS around these nunataks lowered by ~ 100 m during the early- to mid-Holocene. The timing of ice thinning around Gjelsvikfjella shows an excellent match with the recently reported deglacial chronology from the Soya Coast, Lutzow-Holm Bay, indicating that the timing of ice-sheet thinning was synchronous throughout Dronning Maud Land. |
