Terrigenous sand in Labrador Sea hemipelagic sediments and paleoglacial events on Baffin Island over the last 100,00 years

Eight Labrador Sea piston cores with faunal and ash‐zone stratigraphies correlated to deep‐sea oxygen isotope stages were used to compute Labrador Sea terrigenous sand input rates (mg/cm 2 /1000 years) during the last 100,000 years. Sources of the sand in Labrador Sea cores are likely to be ice‐rafting, turbid glacial meltwater inflow or deflation and wind erosion of unvegetated landscapes in the wake of retreating continental ice sheets. High levels of sand input to the Labrador Sea are therefore undoubtedly glacier‐related while low levels of sand input are not. Comparison of the history of Labrador Sea sand input with the chronology of glacial and non‐glacial events on Baffin Island reveals that the era of highest sand input rates, the isotopic stage 5a/4 transition, closely coincided with an episode of early Foxe glacier advance to tidewater (Ayr Lake Stade) along the outer coast of Baffin Island ca. 80,000 B.P. to 60,000 B.P. The period of lowest Labrador Sea sand input rates, late isotopic stage 3 to the present, largely corresponds to a major disconformity in the raised marine and glacigenic sediments on Baffin Island, but includes also the late Foxe/early Holocene Cockburn glacial advance (which did not reach the outer coast of the island) and the modern glacial minimum. Labrador Sea and central‐subpolar North Atlantic sand input histories are reciprocally related over the last 80,000 years. Accelerated sand input in the Labrador Sea during times of reduced sand input in the North Atlantic implies: (1) major early Wisconsin glacier expansion in the circum Labrador Sea/Baffin Bay region and/or; (2) a surface circulation pattern in the North Atlantic which inhibited iceberg melting there while delivering icebergs and relatively warm surface water into the Labrador Sea. Conversely, reduced sand input in the Labrador Sea during times of accelerated sand input in the North Atlantic implies: (1) late Wisconsin glacier recession in the circum Labrador Sea/Baffin Bay region and/or; (2) a circulation pattern which carries icebergs southward and eastward away from the Labrador Sea. These implications are discussed in the light of paleoceanographic evidence for three periods ‐ 80,000 B.P. to 57,000 B.P.; 25,000 B.P. to 13,000 B.P.; and 13,000 B.P. to 9800 B.P