Warming-induced retreat of West Antarctic glaciers weakened carbon sequestration ability but increased mercury enrichment

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Warming-induced retreat of West Antarctic glaciers weakened carbon sequestration ability but increased mercury enrichment

The Southern Ocean, one of Earth’s most productive areas, is widely recognized as a major sink for atmospheric carbon and mercury, tightly coupling primary production with the sedimentary sequestration of these elements. The impacts of climate warming on these processes, however, remain unclear. Here, we utilize 20 sediment cores from the Ross Sea, a representative ice-shelf sea in West Antarctica, to examine how Holocene warming and extensive g…