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Rapid Ice-Sheet Growth and Initiation of the Last Glaciation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

R.G. Johnson  and
J.T. Andrews
R.G. Johnson
Affiliation:
Corporate Technology Center, Honcywell, Inc., 10701 Lyndale Avenue South, Bloomington, Minnesota 55420 USA
J.T. Andrews
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Boulder, Colorado 80302 USA Department of the Geological Sciences, Boulder, Colorado 80302 USA
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Abstract

Calculations based on temperature-corrected oxygen-isotope ratios from deep-sea cores yield a glacioeustatic sea-level fall in excess of 50 m during the first 10,000 yr of the last glaciation, and generally support the local regression of about 70 m inferred from tectonically rising New Guinea beaches. We propose that this rapid glacial buildup depended on high-latitude cooling, and large increases of high-latitude regional winter precipitation in the Laurentide and the Fennoscandian-Barents Sea areas, and that these factors were caused by a critical alteration of North Atlantic Drift currents and their associated subpolar atmospheric circulation. In support of this, faunal data from northeast North Atlantic deep-sea cores show that the glacial buildup was accompanied by a sudden loss of most of the North Atlantic Drift from the Greenland-Norwegian Sea, a factor favoring reduced heat input into the higher latitudes. Subpolar mollusk and foraminifera fauna from elevated marine deposits on the Baffin Island coast, and northwest North Atlantic core data suggest a continuation or an associated restoration of subpolar water west of Greenland as far north as Baffin Bay, a factor favoring precipitation in the northeast Canadian region. Heat transport and atmospheric circulation considerations suggest that the loss of the northeast North Atlantic Drift was itself a major instrument of high-latitude climate change, and probably marked the initiation of major new ice-sheet growth.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , July 1979 , pp. 119 - 134
Copyright
University of Washington

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