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Maximum Southwest Greenland Ice Sheet Recession in the Early Holocene
Author(s) -
Lesnek A. J.,
Briner J. P.,
Young N. E.,
Cuzzone J. K.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2019gl083164
Subject(s) - greenland ice sheet , holocene , ice sheet , geology , climatology , holocene climatic optimum , future sea level , arctic , physical geography , oceanography , cryosphere , ice stream , sea ice , geography
Establishing the timing of maximum Holocene warmth in the Arctic is critical for understanding global climate system response to external forcing. In Greenland, challenges in obtaining climate records that span the full Holocene have hampered efforts to robustly identify when the Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred. Reconstructing land‐based ice sheet history can fill this gap because these ice sheet regions respond sensitively to summer temperature. We synthesize new and published 10 Be and 14 C ages from southwest Greenland to map Greenland ice sheet margin positions from 12 to 7 ka and calculate retreat rates from 12 to 0 ka. We found that maximum Greenland ice sheet recession occurred between ~10.4 and 9.1 ka. Our reconstruction suggests that summer air temperatures in southwest Greenland were highest from ~10.4 to 9.1 ka, providing support for an early regional Holocene Thermal Maximum. These results can serve as benchmarks for comparison with ice sheet and climate model simulations.