Arctic drainage of Laurentide Ice Sheet meltwater throughout the past 14,700 years

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Sufke, F., Gutjahr, M., Keigwin, L. D., Reilly, B., Giosan, L., & Lippold, J. Arctic drainage of Laurentide Ice Sheet meltwater throughout the past 14,700 years. Communications Earth & Environment, 3(1), (2022): 98, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-022-00428-3.During the last deglaciation substantial volumes of meltwater from the decaying Laurentide Ice Sheet were supplied to the Arctic, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic along different drainage routes, sometimes as catastrophic flood events. These events are suggested to have impacted global climate, for example initiating the Younger Dryas cold period. Here we analyze the authigenic Pb isotopic composition of sediments in front of the Arctic Mackenzie Delta, a sensitive tracer for elevated freshwater runoff of the retreating Laurentide Ice Sheet. Our data reveal continuous meltwater supply to the Arctic along the Mackenzie River since the onset of the Bølling–Allerød. The strongest Lake Agassiz outflow event is observed at the end of the Bølling–Allerød close to the onset of the Younger Dryas. In context of deglacial North American runoff records from the southern and eastern outlets, our findings provide a detailed reconstruction of the deglacial drainage chronology of the disintegrating Laurentide Ice Sheet.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

Deglacial patterns of South Pacific overturning inferred from 231Pa and 230Th

The millennial‐scale variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is well documented for the last glacial termination and beyond. Despite its importance for the climate system, the evolution of the South Pacific overturning circulation (SPOC) is by far less well understood. A recently published study highlights the potential applicability of the 231Pa/230Th‐proxy in the Pacific. Here, we present five sedimentary down‐core profiles of 231Pa/230Th‐ratios measured on a depth transect from the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean to test this hypothesis using downcore records. Our data are consistent with an increase in SPOC as early as 20 ka that peaked during Heinrich Stadial 1. The timing indicates that the SPOC did not simply react to AMOC changes via the bipolar seesaw but were triggered via Southern Hemisphere processes

Constraints on the northwestern Atlantic deep water circulation from 231 Pa/ 230 Th during the last 30,000 years

Global climatic changes during the last Glacial and Deglacial have been related to variations of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Here, we present new and refined 231Pa/230Th down‐core profiles extending back to 30 ka BP from the northwestern Atlantic along the Atlantic Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), which is the main component of the southward deep backflow of the AMOC. Besides the well‐known Bermuda Rise records, available high‐resolution 231Pa/230Th data in the northwestern Atlantic are still sparse. Our new records along with reconstructions of deep water provenance from Nd isotopes constrain the timing and magnitude of past changes in AMOC from an additional northwestern Atlantic region forming a depth transect between 3000 and 4760 m water depth. Our extended and improved dataset confirms the weakening of the AMOC during deglacial cold spells such as Heinrich Event 1 and the Younger Dryas interrupted by a reinvigoration during the Bølling‐Allerød interstadial as seen in the prominent 231Pa/230Th records from the Bermuda Rise. However, in contrast to the Bermuda Rise records we find a clearly reduced circulation strength during the Last Glacial Maximum in the deep Atlantic

²³¹Pa/²³⁰Th records from the northwestern Atlantic covering the period since Heinrich Stadial 2 until today

In this dataset we present four new high resolution ²³¹Pa/²³⁰Th records from the Blake-Bahama Outer-Ridge (ODP sites 1059-1062) covering the last 30 ka. The so formed depth-transect (3000 – 4700 m water depth) is extended by the remeasured core KNR140 12JPC (4250 m water depth). The investigated ODP sites at the BBOR have also been analyzed for major element composition of the sediment by XRF scanning of discrete bulk sediment samples and concentration measurements of biogenic opal. We also present one new ¹⁴C age for GeoB 1515-1 and recalibrated ages for this core and GeoB 1523-1 in the equatorial western Atlantic. With these new age models for GeoB 1515-1 and GeoB 1523-1, ²³¹Pa/²³⁰Th records of these cores have slightly changed in timing and amplitude