Late quaternary land-sea interactions: Fennoscandia and Svalbard — The Nordic seas

Abstract

Glaciation curves from western Spitsbergen, northern Norway and western Norway for the entire last interglacial-glacial cycle are presented. Despite uncertainties due to chronology and discontinuous sedimentary records, it seems safe to conclude that there were five major Weichselian glacier expansions in western Norway. So far only three expansions have been recorded in western Spitsbergen. The Weichselian maximum occurred during Lower to Middle Weichselian in western Spitsbergen as opposed to the Upper Weichselian maximum extent for the Scandinavian ice sheet. Episodes of intrusion of relatively warm surface water into the Norwegian Sea, correlate with interstadial conditions in western Norway. The Lower Weichselian maximum ice extent in western Spitsbergen, on the other hand, probably occurred during a prolonged period of at least seasonally open-water conditions far north in the Norwegian Sea, suggesting that this was the major precipitation source. The Upper Weichselian glaciers in Spitsbergen probably failed to grow to a comparable size due to lack of precipitation as the entire Norwegian Sea probably was ice covered year-round throughout most of Stage 2. These observations suggest that there is a ca. 20 ka interval between glaciations in western Norway and a ca. 40 ka interval in western Spitsbergen. This may reflect ‘Milankovitch cyclicity,’ but both geological and climatological arguments against this supposition.