Numerical studies on the Impact of the Last Glacial Cycle on recent borehole temperature profiles: implications for terrestrial energy balance ...

• Main Authors: Beltrami, Hugo, Matharoo, Gurpreet S., Tarasov, L., Rath, V., Smerdon, Jason E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Columbia University 2014
• Subjects: Glacial landforms; Climatic changes > Data processing; Paleoclimatology; Geology; FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences; Geomorphology; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d81n80j3; https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D81N80J3

Reconstructions of past climatic changes from borehole temperature profiles are important independent estimates of temperature histories over the last millennium. There remain, however, multiple uncertainties in the interpretation of these data as climatic indicators and as estimates of the changes in the heat content of the continental subsurface due to long-term climatic change. One of these uncertainties is associated with the often ignored impact of the last glacial cycle (LGC) on the subsurface energy content, and on the estimate of the background quasi steady-state signal associated with the diffusion of accretionary energy from the Earth's interior. Here, we provide the first estimate of the impact of the development of the Laurentide ice sheet on the estimates of energy and temperature reconstructions from measurements of terrestrial borehole temperatures in North America. We use basal temperature values from the data-calibrated Memorial University of Newfoundland glacial systems model (MUN-GSM) to ...