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Repeated ice streaming on the northwest Greenland shelf since the onset of the Middle Pleistocene Transition

A. Newton,M. Huuse,P. Knutz,David R. Cox,S. Brocklehurst

Published 2019 in Unknown venue

ABSTRACT

Ice streams provide a fundamental control on ice sheet discharge and depositional patterns along 10 glaciated margins. This paper investigates ancient ice streams by presenting the first 3D seismic geomorphological 11 analysis of a major glacigenic succession offshore Greenland. In Melville Bugt, northwest Greenland, five sets of 12 buried landforms have been interpreted as mega-scale glacial lineations (MSGL) and this record provides evidence 13 for extensive ice streams on outer palaeo-shelves. A gradual change in mean MSGL orientation and associated 14 depocentres suggests that the palaeo-ice flow and sediment transport pathways migrated in response to the evolving 15 submarine topography. The stratigraphy and available chronology shows that the MSGL are confined to separate 16 stratigraphic units and were most likely formed during several glacial stages since the onset of the Middle 17 Pleistocene Transition at ~1.3 Ma. The ice streams in Melville Bugt were as extensive as elsewhere in Greenland 18 during this transition, but, by the glacial stages of the Middle and Late Pleistocene, the ice streams in Melville Bugt 19 appear to have repeatedly reached the palaeo-shelf edge. This suggests that the ice streams that occupied Melville 20 Bugt during the Middle and Late Pleistocene were more active and extensive than elsewhere in Greenland. High21 resolution buried 3D landform records such as these have not been previously observed anywhere on the Greenland 22 shelf margin and provide a crucial benchmark for testing how accurately numerical models are able to recreate past 23 configurations of the Greenland Ice Sheet. 24 https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2019-268 Preprint. Discussion started: 28 November 2019 c © Author(s) 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.

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