Newly funded Project TOP-DOWN (funded by the Geologic Survey of Ireland)

Ice sheets are three-dimensional features; thus, understanding changes in both lateral extent and thickness is essential to fully characterising their response to a warming climate. Ireland affords a natural laboratory for examining the thickness of a well constrained former ice sheet. Through the novel use of paired cosmogenic nuclides 14C and 10Be, TOP-DOWN will address an outstanding question in Irish Quaternary geology: Were mountain summits in Ireland exposed during the last glaciation as nunataks?The goal of TOP-DOWN is to geochemically test the presence of potential palaeo-nunataks within Ireland during the last glaciation.