Long-term record of Barents Sea Ice Sheet advance to the shelf edge from a 140,000 year record
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Authors
Pope, Ed L
Talling, Peter J
Hunt, James E
Allin, Joshua R
Cartigny, Matthieu JB
Long, David
Mozzato, Alessandro
Stanford, Jennifer D
Tappin, David R
Watts, Millie
Publication Date
2016-08-24Journal Title
Quaternary Science Reviews
ISSN
0277-3791
Publisher
Elsevier
Volume
150
Pages
55-66
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Pope, E. L., Talling, P. J., Hunt, J. E., Dowdeswell, J., Allin, J. R., Cartigny, M. J., Long, D., et al. (2016). Long-term record of Barents Sea Ice Sheet advance to the shelf edge from a 140,000 year record. Quaternary Science Reviews, 150 55-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.08.014
Abstract
The full-glacial extent and deglacial behaviour of marine-based ice sheets, such as the Barents Sea Ice
Sheet, is well documented since the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. However, reworking
of older sea-floor sediments and landforms during repeated Quaternary advances across the shelf
typically obscures their longer-term behaviour, which hampers our understanding. Here, we provide the
first detailed long-term record of Barents Sea Ice Sheet advances, using the timing of debris-flows on the
Bear Island Trough-Mouth Fan. Ice advanced to the shelf edge during four distinct periods over the last
140,000 years. By far the largest sediment volumes were delivered during the oldest advance more than
128,000 years ago. Later advances occurred from 68,000 to 60,000, 39,400 to 36,000 and 26,000 to
20,900 years before present. The debris-flows indicate that the dynamics of the Saalian and the
Weichselian Barents Sea Ice Sheet were very different. The repeated ice advance and retreat cycles during
the Weichselian were shorter lived than those seen in the Saalian. Sediment composition shows the
configuration of the ice sheet was also different between the two glacial periods, implying that the ice
feeding the Bear Island Ice stream came predominantly from Scandinavia during the Saalian, whilst it
drained more ice from east of Svalbard during the Weichselian.
Sponsorship
This research was supported by the UK NERC Arctic Research Programme under the project on whether climate change increases the landslide-tsunami risk to the UK (NE/K00008X/1; NE/K000187/1). E. Pope was supported by grant NE/K00008X/1. The crew and shipboard parties of the RV Pelagia and the RSS James Clark Ross (JCR) are thanked for their help in collection of the numerous cores involved in this project. Earlier work on the JCR was supported by NERC grant NER/T/S/2003/00318.
Funder references
NERC (NE/K000187/1)
NERC (NER/T/S/2003/00318)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.08.014
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/260452
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International, Attribution 4.0 International, Attribution 4.0 International, Attribution 4.0 International
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