Age determination of three sediment cores from the Eurasian continental margin

• Main Authors: Knies, Jochen, Nowaczyk, Norbert R, Müller, Claudia, Vogt, Christoph, Stein, Ruediger
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2000
• Subjects: Arctic Ocean; ARK-VIII/2; ARK-XI/1; AWI_Paleo; Gravity corer (Kiel type); KAL; Kasten corer; Laptev Sea; Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions from Marine Sediments @ AWI; Polarstern; PS19/112; PS19 EPOS II; PS2138-1; PS2741-1; PS2782-1; PS36; PS36/028; PS36/086; SL; Svalbard; Arctic; Barents Sea; Kara Sea; Solheim; Ice Sheet; laptev; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.762326; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.762326

Sediment cores located along the Eurasian continental margin (Arctic Ocean) have been studied to reconstruct the environmental changes in terms of waxing and waning of the Barents/Kara Sea ice-sheets, Atlantic water inflow, and sea-ice distribution over the last 150 kyr. The stratigraphy of the cores is based on stable oxygen isotopes, AMS 14C, and paleomagnetic data. We studied variations in marine and terrigenous input by a multiproxy approach, involving direct comparison of sedimentological and organo-geochemical data. Extensive episodes of northern Barents Sea ice-sheet growth during marine isotope stages (MIS) 6 and 2 have been supported by, at least, subsurface Atlantic water inflow, moisture-bearing storms, low summer insolation, and minimal calving of ice. Ice advance during MIS 4 was probably restricted to the shallow shelf. Between MIS 4 and MIS 2, large ice-sheet fluctuations correspond to contemporary Laurentide surging events and indicate short-term climatic changes in the Arctic Ocean as has been recorded in lower latitudes. In contrast, in low precipitation areas in eastern Eurasia, glacial activity was rather limited. Only distinct ice-rafted debris (IRD) input during Termination II and early MIS 3 reflects severe glaciations on the northern Severnaya Semlya margin during MIS 6 and MIS 4. We conclude that (1) oscillations of ice-sheets are less frequent along the eastern Eurasian margin than in areas with continuous moisture supply like the western Eurasian margins and that (2) major fluctuations of the Kara Sea ice-sheet during the last 150 kyr apparently followed the major interglacial/glacial MIS 5/4 and MIS 7/6 transitions rather than the precession (23 kyr) and the tilt (41 kyr) cyclicity of the Earth's orbit as observed for the Scandinavian (SIS) and the Svalbard ice-sheets, respectively [Mangerud, J., Jansen, E., Landvik, J.Y., 1996. Late Cenozoic history of the Scandinavian and Barents Sea ice-sheets. In: Solheim, A., Riis, F., Elverhøi, A., Faleide, J.J., Jensen, L.N., Cloetingh, S. ...