Biomarker proxies on sediment cores in the central Arctic Ocean

Although the permanently to seasonally ice-covered Arctic Ocean is a unique and sensitive component in the Earth's climate system, the knowledge of its long-term climate history remains very limited due to the restricted number of pre-Quaternary sedimentary records. During Polarstern Expedition...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stein, Ruediger, Fahl, Kirsten, Schreck, Michael, Knorr, Gregor, Niessen, Frank, Forwick, Matthias, Gebhardt, Andrea Catalina, Jensen, Laura, Kaminski, Michael Anthony, Kopf, Achim J, Matthiessen, Jens, Jokat, Wilfried, Lohmann, Gerrit, PS87 Geoscience Party
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:English
Published: PANGAEA 2015
Subjects:
AWI_Paleo
Integrated Ocean Drilling Program / International Ocean Discovery Program
IODP
Ocean Drilling Program
ODP
Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions from Marine Sediments @ AWI
Arctic
Arctic Ocean
Lomonosov Ridge
Sea ice
Online Access:https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.855509
https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.855509
Description
Summary:Although the permanently to seasonally ice-covered Arctic Ocean is a unique and sensitive component in the Earth's climate system, the knowledge of its long-term climate history remains very limited due to the restricted number of pre-Quaternary sedimentary records. During Polarstern Expedition PS87/2014, we discovered multiple submarine landslides over a distance of >350 km along Lomonosov Ridge. Removal of younger sediments from steep headwalls has led to exhumation of Miocene to early Quaternary sediments close to the seafloor, allowing the retrieval of such old sediments with gravity cores. Multi-proxy biomarker analyses of these gravity cores reveal for the first time that the late Miocene central Arctic Ocean was relatively warm (4-7°C) and ice-free during summer, whereas sea ice occurred during spring and autumn/winter. A comparison of our proxy data with Miocene climate simulations seems to favour relatively high late Miocene atmospheric CO2 concentrations. These new findings from the Arctic region provide new benchmarks for groundtruthing global climate reconstructions and modeling.

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