ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with an analog for northern hemisphere paleo-ice sheets. The size and complexity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet make it a natural laboratory for understanding the behavior of Quaternary paleo-ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere ice sheets were arrayed with a central core of floating ice shelf or sea ice, fringed largely by marine and then terrestrial components; just the reverse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The most important Antarctic analogs which is also supported in Greenland, is our view that Northern Hemisphere ice sheets were drained largely by ice streams wherever troughs now exist across high-latitude continental shelves. Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had a trimodal response to sea level, precipitation, and summer temperature, whereas the Antarctic Ice Sheet had a bimodal response to sea level and precipitation. If marine ice streams existed in any frequency, the marine components of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets were susceptible to the marine instability mechanisms that operate in Antarctica.
