The Taimyr Peninsula and the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago, Arctic Russia:a synthesis of glacial history and palaeo-environmental change during the Last Glacial cycle (MIS 5e-2)

• Published in: Quaternary Science Reviews
• Main Authors: Möller, Per, Alexanderson, Helena, Funder, Svend Visby, Hjort, Christian
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: /dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/TheFacultyOfScience; Faculty of Science; Eurasian ice sheet Taimyr Glaciation history Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction Weichselian chronology; Arctic; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelves; Kara Sea; Severnaya Zemlya; Taimyr; Siberia
• Online Access: https://curis.ku.dk/portal/da/publications/the-taimyr-peninsula-and-the-severnaya-zemlya-archipelago-arctic-russia(033fc9aa-a368-4535-b573-020a6a336b56).html; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.10.018

We here suggest a glacial and climate history of the Taimyr Peninsula and Severnaya Zemlya archipelago in arctic Siberia for the last about 150 000 years (ka). Primarily it is based on results from seven field seasons between 1996 and 2012, to a large extent already published in papers referred to in the text e and on data presented by Russian workers from the 1930s to our days and by German colleagues working there since the 1990s. Although glaciations even up here often started in the local mountains, their culminations in this region invariably seems to have centred on the shallow Kara Sea continental shelf e most likely due to expanding marine ice-shelves grounding there, as a combined effect of thickening ice and eustatically lowered sea-levels. The most extensive glaciation so far identified in this region (named the Taz glaciation) took place during Marine Isotope Stage 6 (MIS 6), i.e. being an equivalent to the late Saale/Illinoian glaciations. It reached c. 400 km southeast of the Kara Sea coast, across and well beyond the Byrranga Mountain range and ended c. 130 ka. It was followed by the MIS 5e (Karginsky/Eemian) interglacial, with an extensive marine transgression to 140 m above present sea level e facilitated by strong isostatic downloading during the preceding glaciation. During the latest (Zyryankan/Weichselian/Wisconsinan) glacial cycle followed a series of major glacial advances. The earliest and most extensive, culminating c. 110e100 ka (MIS 5de5e), also reached south of the Byrranga mountains and its post-glacial marine limit there was c. 100 m a.s.l. The later glacial phases (around 70e60 ka and 20 ka) terminated at the North Taimyr Ice Marginal Zone (NTZ), along or some distance inland from the present northwest coast of Taimyr. They dammed glacial lakes, which caused the Taimyr River to flow southwards where to-day it flows northwards into the Kara Sea. The c. 20 ka glacial phase, contemporary with the maximum (LGM) glaciation in NW Europe, was this glacial cycle's least extensive one up ...