Dynamics of the Barents-Kara ice sheet as revealed by quartz sand grain microtextures of the late Pleistocene Arctic Ocean sediments

Abstract

During the entire Quaternary, ice sheets advanced and retreated across the circum-Arctic margins in a series of climate related glacial-interglacial cycles. It is critical to obtain evaluation of the nature of initiated glaciers at the Arctic margins after the pronounced interglacial periods. In this study this will be done by inferring from glacially generated quartz sand grain surface microtextures and related sedimentology extracted from the central Arctic Ocean sediments. These microtextures can be correlated with the generation and fluctuations in the extent of the late Pleistocene Eurasian Ice Sheet i.e. Barents-Kara Ice Sheet. The central Arctic Ocean sediments in the Lomonosov Ridge, having been deposited after the late Pleistocene interglaciations and having had no internal hiatuses, provide an excellent time window for usage of quartz sand grain surface textures for evaluating possible evolving glaciers and continental ice sheets. This is based on the fact that iceberg and sea-ice transported quartz sand grains and their mechanically formed surface textures, created under high cryostatic stress, are diagnostic for glacier thickness and dynamics having been existed in sediment source areas. Sand-sized quartz grains in deep marine sediments favour iceberg or sea-ice transportation with characteristic content of microtextures formed prior this transportation. The sand grain surface microtextures and their frequencies of the selected submarine Lomonosov Ridge sediments during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 to MIS 3 are analysed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Coring during the Arctic Ocean 96 expedition (core 96/12-1pc) provided alternating clay to silty clay sediments which are characterised by prominent silt to sand-size containing intervals. The specific glacial crushing and high cryostatic stress generated features, such as high angularity, conchoidal fractures, steps and sub-parallel linear fractures, were observed from quartz sand grain surfaces. Continental ice generation and extent are evident soon after the Eemian interglaciation and the following MIS 4 stage shows the highest frequencies of glacigenic microtextures. The microtexture generation under high cryostatic pressure underneath ice more than 1 km thick, can be taken as concurrent signal of the temporal expansion of the northernmost continental ice sheets, which could easily have reached the shelf break of the Barents, Kara and western Laptev seas during that time.