Storfjorden is a large north-south trending sound located in the southern part of Svalbard in the northwestern Barents Sea. Presently, several glaciers drain into the northern and western part of Storfjorden. Our study area covers the southern part of the sound, which is divided by a north-south striking basement ridge (the ‘Mid-ridge’) into a narrow western trough (‘Little-Storfjorden’) and a broader ...

A better understanding of past extent and dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is required to provide context for present-day observations, to constrain numerical climate models and to predict future scenarios of ice-sheet response to recent climatic change. The presence of a grounded GrIS on the NE Greenland shelf during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is supported by high-resolution seismic ...

In the light of rapidly diminishing sea ice cover in the Arctic during the present atmospheric warming, it is imperative to study the distribution of sea ice in the past in relation to rapid climate change. Here we focus on glacial millennial-scale climatic events (Dansgaard/Oeschger events) using the sea ice proxy IP25 in combination with phytoplankton proxy data and quantification of diatom species ...

The production of high-salinity brines during sea-ice freezing in circum-arctic coastal polynyas is thought to be part of northern deep water formation as it supplies additional dense waters to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation system. To better predict the effect of possible future summer ice-free conditions in the Arctic Ocean on global climate, it is important to improve our ...

Planktonic calcifiers, the foraminiferal species <i>Neogloboquadrina pachyderma</i> and <i>Turborotalita quinqueloba</i>, and the thecosome pteropod <i>Limacina helicina</i> from plankton tows and surface sediments from the northern Barents Sea were studied to assess how shell density varies with depth habitat and ontogenetic processes. The shells were measured using X-ray microcomputed tomography ...

We present a high-resolution record of calcium carbonate preservation alongside the distribution pattern of planktic foraminifera from the Fram Strait. The record covers the marine isotope stage (MIS) 2, 28.8 to 15.4 kyr, including the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the early deglaciation in multidecadal temporal resolution. The investigation is based on the distribution patterns of planktic ...

Localized tephra deposition in marine sequences is the product of many complex primary and secondary depositional processes. These can significantl y influence the potential applicability of tephra depos- its as isochronous marker horizons and current techniques, used in isolation, may be insufficient to fully unravel these processes. Here we demonstrate the innovative application of X-ray ...