LATE QUATERNARY DETRITAL CARBONATE (DC-) LAYERS IN BAFFIN BAY MARINE SEDIMENTS (67°–74°N): CORRELATION WITH HEINRICH EVENTS IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC?

Abstract

Episodes of glaciation in the region north of Baffin Bay resulted in the erosion of Paleozoic carbonate outcrops in NW Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic. These events are recognized in the marine sediments of Baffin Bay (BB) as a series of detrital carbonate-rich (DC-) layers. BBDC-layers thin southward within Baffin Bay; thus, the contribution of Baffin Bay ice-rafted carbonate-rich sediments to the North Atlantic is probably slight, especially compared with sediment output from Hudson Strait during Heinrich events. We reexamine (cf. Aksu, 1981) a series of nine piston cores from the axis of Baffin Bay and across the Davis Strait sill and provide a suite of 21 AMS 14C dates on foramininfera which bracket the ages of several DC-layers. The onset of the last DC event is dated in six cores and has an age of ca. 12.4 ka. In northern and central Baffin Bay a thick DC-layer occurs at around 4 m in the cores and is dated >40 ka. There were three to six DC intervening events. The youngest BBDC event (possibly a double event) lags Heinrich event 1 (H-1) off Hudson Strait, dated at 14.5 ka, but it is coeval with the pronounced warming seen in GISP2 records from the Greenland Ice Sheet during interstadial #1. We hypothesize that BBDC episodes are coeval with major interstadial δ 18O peaks from GISP2 and other Greenland ice core records and are caused by or associated with the advection of Atlantic Water into Baffin Bay (cf. Hiscott et al., 1989) and the subsequent rapid retreat of ice streams in the northern approaches to Baffin Bay.