Integrated analysis of glacial sediment input and ocean circulation in NW Barents Sea

• Main Author: RUI, LEONARDO
• Other Authors: Rui, Leonardo
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Università degli Studi di Trieste 2018
• Subjects: Last glacial maxima; Arctic Ocean; NW Barents Sea; ice sheet; ocean circulation; Settore GEO/02 - Geologia Stratigrafica e Sedimentologica; Arctic; Barents Sea; Global warming; Ice Sheet; Sea ice; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11368/2922568

The Arctic Ocean is one of the most climatically sensitive areas, being the crossway of global ocean circulation (Charles et al., 1994; Thiede and Myhre, 1996; Knies et al., 1999; Hald et al., 2004). The West Spitsbergen continental margin is characterized by the presence of the West Spitsbergen Current, a warm Atlantic Water that flows northwards along the continental margin. This Atlantic Water is the major heat advection toward the Arctic, mixing with the cold and partially sea-ice covered Polar Water; thanks to the West Spitsbergen Current, the Polar Water is driven into the northern hemisphere circulation system. Studies on the natural variability of the Arctic Ocean circulation are vital for understanding the future of the Arctic climate system and specifically its feedback mechanisms related to global warming (Spielhagen et al., 2011). Moreover, the investigation of past climate variations in the Arctic Ocean is essential to predict future scenarios. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), around 20.000 years ago, the Arctic was mainly covered by a large ice sheet (Hughes et al., 2016) and the glacial sedimentary processes controlled erosion, transport and deposition along the entire margin. The following deglaciation can be considered to a certain extent as an analog to the climatic period we are facing towards the end of the present century. The sedimentary processes were affected by the ocean circulation to an extent that was also varying according to cyclicity at glacial-interglacial and shorter scales. In this Ph.D. project focuses on the interactions between glacial sedimentary input and ocean circulation in the area of NW Barents Sea, during LGM and deglaciations. The available geophysical data were acquired during several research cruises in the study area. From the analysis of this dataset it was possible to identify a number of sedimentary bodies related both to a glacial sediment input and current circulation, responsible for downslope and along-slope sedimentary processes, respectively. The ...