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Deglacial to Postglacial History of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland

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Deglacial to Postglacial History of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland Deglacial to postglacial history of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland: a marine perspective from Kane Basin Eleanor Georgiadis, Jacques Giraudeau, Philippe Martinez, Patrick Lajeunesse, Guillaume St-Onge, Sabine Schmidt, Guillaume Massé To cite this version: Eleanor Georgiadis, Jacques Giraudeau, Philippe Martinez, Patrick Lajeunesse, Guillaume St-Onge, et al.. Deglacial to postglacial history of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland: a marine perspective from Kane Basin. Climate of the Past, European Geosciences Union (EGU), 2018, 14 (12), pp.1991-2010. 10.5194/cp-14-1991-2018. hal-02128823 HAL Id: hal-02128823 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02128823 Submitted on 14 May 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Clim. Past, 14, 1991–2010, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1991-2018 © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Deglacial to postglacial history of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland: a marine perspective from Kane Basin Eleanor Georgiadis1,2, Jacques Giraudeau1, Philippe Martinez1, Patrick Lajeunesse2, Guillaume St-Onge3, Sabine Schmidt1, and Guillaume Massé2 1Université de Bordeaux, CNRS, UMR 5805 EPOC, 33615 Pessac, France 2Université Laval, UMI 3376 TAKUVIK, Québec, G1V 0A6, Canada 3Université du Québec à Rimouski and GEOTOP Research Center, Institut des sciences de la mer de Rimouski (ISMER), Rimouski, G5L 3A1, Canada Correspondence: Eleanor Georgiadis ([email protected]) Received: 26 June 2018 – Discussion started: 11 July 2018 Revised: 3 November 2018 – Accepted: 27 November 2018 – Published: 18 December 2018 Abstract. A radiocarbon-dated marine sediment core re- in our record by the increased winnowing of lighter parti- trieved in Kane Basin, central Nares Strait, was analysed cles as the glacio-isostatic rebound brought the seabed closer to constrain the timing of the postglacial opening of this to subsurface currents. Reduced iceberg delivery from 7.5 to Arctic gateway and its Holocene evolution. This study is 1.9 cal ka BP inferred by our dataset may be linked to the re- based on a set of sedimentological and geochemical prox- treat of the bordering ice sheets on land that decreased their ies of changing sedimentary processes and sources that pro- number of marine termini. vide new insight into the evolution of ice sheet configura- tion in Nares Strait. Proglacial marine sedimentation at the core site initiated ca. 9.0 cal ka BP following the retreat of 1 Introduction grounded ice. Varying contributions of sand and clasts sug- gest unstable sea ice conditions and glacial activity, which The Holocene history of Nares Strait, Northwest Green- subsisted until ca. 7.5 cal ka BP under the combined influence land, has remained somewhat cryptic despite investigations of warm atmospheric temperatures and proglacial cooling in- during the past 4 decades (e.g. Blake Jr., 1979; Kelly and duced by the nearby Innuitian (IIS) and Greenland (GIS) ice Bennike, 1992; Mudie et al., 2004; Jennings et al., 2011.). sheets. An interval rich in ice-rafted debris (IRD) is inter- Nares Strait is a key gateway for Arctic seawater and ice preted as the collapse of the ice saddle in Kennedy Channel toward the Atlantic Ocean, contributing to up to half of ca. 8.3 cal ka BP that marks the complete opening of Nares the volume of water transported through the Canadian Arc- Strait and the initial connection between the Lincoln Sea and tic Archipelago (CAA), which provides fresh water to the northernmost Baffin Bay. Delivery of sediment by icebergs Labrador Sea and influences deep water formation (Belkin et was strengthened between ca. 8.3 and ca. 7.5 cal ka BP fol- al., 1998; Münchow et al., 2006; McGeehan and Maslowski, lowing the collapse of the buttress of glacial ice in Kennedy 2012). Nares Strait supplies one of the most productive re- Channel that triggered the acceleration of GIS and IIS fluxes gions of the Arctic, the North Water Polynya (NOW), with toward Nares Strait. The destabilisation in glacial ice even- nutrient-rich Pacific water (Jones et al., 2003; Jones and Eert, tually led to the rapid retreat of the GIS in eastern Kane 2004) and maintains its very existence by trapping sea and Basin at about 8.1 cal ka BP as evidenced by a noticeable calved glacial ice in ice arches in the north and south of the change in sediment geochemistry in our core. The gradual strait (Melling et al., 2001; Mundy and Barber, 2001). decrease in carbonate inputs to Kane Basin between ∼ 8:1 Despite the importance of Nares Strait, intrinsic investi- and ∼ 4:1 cal ka BP reflects the late deglaciation of Wash- gations into its late Pleistocene history, which is intimately ington Land. The shoaling of Kane Basin can be observed linked with the dynamics of the bordering Innuitian (IIS) and Greenland (GIS) ice sheets, are relatively sparse and Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 1992 E. Georgiadis et al.: Deglacial to postglacial history of Nares Strait, Northwest Greenland much of the knowledge relies on land-based studies. Debate in the Early Holocene and offers a unique opportunity to ex- initially surrounded early studies into glacial configuration plore the local dynamics of ice sheet retreat leading to the in the CAA with some authors concluding that the CAA opening of the strait and the establishment of the modern channels were not blocked during the Last Glacial Maxi- oceanographic circulation pattern. mum (LGM) (Franklin Ice Complex theory; e.g. England, 1976), while others argued that the IIS coalesced with the bordering Greenland and Laurentide ice sheets (e.g. Blake 2 Regional settings Jr., 1970). The presence of erratic boulders originating from Greenland on Ellesmere Island (England, 1999), cosmogenic Nares Strait is a long (530 km) and narrow channel separating nuclide surface-exposure dating (Zreda et al., 1999), and Northwest Greenland from Ellesmere Island, Arctic Canada, radiocarbon dating on mollusc shells (e.g. Bennike et al., connecting the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean in Baf- 1987; Blake Jr. et al., 1992; Kelly and Bennike, 1992) fi- fin Bay (Fig. 1). Kane Basin is the central, wide (120 km nally settled the argument in favour of the latter narrative by large at its broadest point, totalling an area of approximately supporting the coalescence of the IIS and GIS along Nares 27 000 km2), and shallow (220 m deep) basin within Nares Strait between 19 and ca. 8 14C ka BP (∼ 22–8.2 cal ka BP, Strait. It separates Smith Sound (600 m deep, 50 km wide) in 1R D 240). England (1999) reviewed all land-based evi- the south of the strait from Kennedy Channel (340 m deep, dence available at that time and proposed a complex deglacial 30 km wide) in the north. A smaller but deeper basin, Hall history of Nares Strait, featuring the late break-up of glacial Basin (800 m deep), where the Petermann Glacier terminates, ice in central Nares Strait (i.e. Kennedy Channel). These connects Kennedy Channel to the Robeson Channel (400 m land-based studies have been complemented by Jennings et deep, 21 km wide) in the northernmost sector of the strait. al. (2011) and Mudie et al. (2004) investigations of marine The oceanographic circulation in Nares Strait consists of a sediment cores collected in Hall Basin, northernmost Nares generally southward-flowing current driven by the barotropic Strait, which record a change in a number of environmental gradient between the Lincoln Sea and Baffin Bay (Kliem and proxies ca. 8.3 14C ka BP (∼ 8:5 cal ka BP, 1R D 240). More Greenberg, 2003; Münchow et al., 2006), while the baro- recently, the geophysical mapping of submarine glacial land- clinic temperature balance generates strong, northerly winds forms by Jakobsson et al. (2018) provided additional insight that affect surface layers (Samelson and Barbour, 2008; regarding the retreat of Petermann Glacier in Hall Basin, Münchow et al., 2007; Rabe et al., 2012). The relative influ- and new surface-exposure dating on moraines in Washing- ence of the barotropic vs. baroclinic factors that control the ton Land demonstrates that the Humboldt Glacier, eastern currents in Nares Strait is highly dependent on the presence Kane Basin, abandoned a previous position of stability ca. of sea ice that inhibits wind stress when landfast (Rabe et 8:3±1:7 ka BP (Reusche et al., 2018). To date, little is known al., 2012; Münchow, 2016). Long-term ADCP measurements about the downstream consequences of the opening of the of flow velocity record average speeds of 20–30 cm s−1 in strait, despite the recovery of multiple marine archives in Kennedy Channel (Rabe et al., 2012; Münchow et al., 2006) northernmost Baffin Bay (Blake Jr. et al., 1996; Levac et al., and 10–15 cm s−1 in Smith Sound (Melling et al., 2001) with 2001; Knudsen et al., 2008; St-Onge and St-Onge, 2014). the highest velocities measured in the top 100 m of the wa- Several aspects of the evolution of northernmost Baffin Bay ter column. Strong currents peaking at 60 cm s−1 have been have been explored with regards to ice sheet retreat in the measured instantaneously in Robeson Channel (Münchow et area (Blake Jr. et al., 1996), ice sheet dynamics (St-Onge and al., 2007).
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