An Antarctic‐style ice sheet in the northern hemisphere: Toward a new global glacial theory

Abstract

Abstract New studies suggest that two superlarge ice sheets, composed of a number of terrestrial and marine ice sheets interconnected by floating ice shelves, formed in the northern hemisphere during Late Pleistocene time. The combined ice sheets (the proposed names of which are the North Atlantic or Pan‐Arctic and the North Pacific ice sheets) had areas of 30 and 10.5 million km2 and volumes of 50 and 10 million km3 respectively. Combined Antarctic‐style terrestrial‐marine ice sheets of this type seem to have been typical of all former glaciations. The Eurasian Arctic was dominated by two largely marine ice sheets: the Kara and East Siberian ice sheets. The former was centered on the southern Kara Sea; it invaded both west‐central Northern Siberia and the eastern Barents Shelf and was the largest ice dome in Eurasia. The East Siberian Ice Sheet rested on the floor of the Laptev, East Siberian, and Chukchi seas; its former existence has recently been proved on the basis of the glacial geomorphology of the...