Late-Holocene East Antarctic climate trends from ice-core and lake-sediment proxies

A high-resolution record of evaporation for the last ∼650 years was derived from the diatom-salinity signal preserved in a sediment core taken from Ace Lake, Vestfold Hills (68° 28′S, 78° 11′E), Antarctica. The seasonal oxygen isotope signal preserved in an ice core from Law Dome (66° 44′S, 112° 50′E), Antarctica, revealed a high-resolution summer temperature record for the same time period. The two proxies show highly correlated behaviour despite having significantly different climatic response mechanisms and a large geographic separation. The correlation observed between proxies based on such differing processes and analytical methodologies provides not only a climate record for the past ∼650 years that is both robust and regionally representative of coastal East Antarctica but also confirmation of the utility of reconstructions using these methods.