Atlantic water inflow to Labrador Sea and its interaction with ice sheet dynamics during the Holocene ...

• Main Authors: Weiser, J, Titschack, J, Kienast, M, McCave, IN, Lochte, AA, Saini, J, Stein, R, Hebbeln, D
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier BV 2021
• Subjects: Sortable Silt; Current-speed reconstructions; AMOC; 8.2-ka event; Greenland Ice Sheet; Labrador Sea; Baffin Bay; Greenland; Nuuk; Baffin; Ice Sheet; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.78849; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331396

The hydrodynamics of the Labrador Sea, controlled by the complex interplay of oceanographic, atmospheric and ice-sheet processes, play a crucial role for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). An improved understanding of the hydrodynamics and its forcing in the past could therefore hold a key to understanding its future behaviour. At present, there is a remarkable temporal mismatch, in that the largely microfossil-based reconstructions of Holocene Atlantic-water inflow/influence in the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay appear to lag grain size-based current strength reconstructions from the adjacent North Atlantic by > 2ka. Here, we present the first current strength record from the West Greenland shelf off Nuuk to reconstruct Atlantic Water (AW)-inflow to the Labrador Sea via the West Greenland Current. Our data show that the Holocene AW-inflow into Labrador Sea is well aligned with the Holocene Speed Maximum documented in the North Atlantic (McCave and Andrews, 2019; Quat. Sci. Rev. 223), ...