首页|Challenging the hypothesis of an Arctic Ocean lake during recent glacial episodes

Challenging the hypothesis of an Arctic Ocean lake during recent glacial episodes

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ABSTRACT The Arctic Ocean is one of the last frontiers on Earth with many unknowns about its geological and climate history and considerable speculation on its role in the Earth's climate and ocean system. It has been proposed recently that it was occupied by a freshwater body of more than 9.5 × 106 km3 underneath a thick ice mass during part of glacial isotopic stages 6 and 4. We argue that such a dramatic scenario, implying replacement of marine waters by freshwater throughout the entire Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas, is physically implausible. The very low 230Th excesses (230Thxs) observed in sediments from these intervals were used as evidence for the presence of a U‐depleted overlying freshwater column. We show here that they may simply result from short, sporadic sedimentary pulses, below multiyear sea ice or ice shelves, linked to deglacial ice streaming and surging events interrupting long‐duration sedimentary gaps. Due to this sporadic sedimentation regime, interpolating time from 230Thxs data or between benchmark ages in sedimentary sequences would simply be erroneous.

Arctic Oceanfreshwaterice coverQuaternary

Claude Hillaire‐Marcel、Paul G. Myers、Shawn Marshall、Lev Tarasov、Karl Purcell、Christelle Not、Anne De Vernal

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Geotop Research Center, UQAM

University of Alberta

University of Calgary

Memorial University of Newfoundland

University of Bergen

The University of Hong Kong

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2022

Journal of quaternary science

Journal of quaternary science

SCI
ISSN:0267-8179
年,卷(期):2022.37(4)
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