Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations

The response of the vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) to climate shifts due to changes in Earth's orbit is uncertain, but there is potential for several metres of sea level change. Naish and co-authors extracted a sediment core from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf and found evidence that the WAIS periodically collapsed during the early Pliocene (3-5 million years ago); and the pattern of collapse suggests an influence of ∼40,000-year cycles in the tilt of Earth's rotational axis.