An ice-marginal δ18O record from Barnes Ice Cap, Baffin Island, Canada

• Published in: Annals of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Zdanowicz, Christian M., Fisher, D. A., Clark, I., Lacelle, D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Geological Survey of Canada 2002
• Subjects: Glaciers; Arctic; Canada; Barnes Ice Cap; Quaternary; stable isotopes; Physical Geography; Naturgeografi; Baffin Island; Greenland; Annals of Glaciology; Baffin; glacier*; Ice cap; Ice Sheet; Keewatin
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-300885; https://doi.org/10.3189/172756402781817031

Barnes Ice Cap, Baffin Island, Canada, is a remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet that separated from it about 8500 years ago. Owing to recession of the ice cap during the Holocene, Pleistocene-age ice is now exposed along the margin in a distinctive bubble-rich white band. δ180 variations across the white ice resemble those in Canadian Arctic ice cores, suggesting that Barnes Ice Cap preserves a climatic record through thelast glacial period, possibly reaching back into the previous (Sangamon) interglacial. The δ180 shift at the Wisconsin-Holocene transition (15 per mil) exceeds that in other Canadian and Greenland records and cannot be explained solely in climatic terms. A steady-state model reconstruction of the Laurentide ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum suggests that Late-glacial strata in Barnes Ice Cap originated high up ( >2400 m a.s.l.) and far "inland" on the ice sheet, along a ridge that extended between the ancestral Foxe and Keewatin ice domes.