South Greenland ice-sheet collapse during Marine Isotope Stage 11
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Material Information

Title:
South Greenland ice-sheet collapse during Marine Isotope Stage 11
Series Title:
Nature Volume 510
Creator:
Reyes, Alberto V.
Carlson, Anders E.
Beard, Brian L.
Hatfield, Robert G.
Stoner, Joseph S.
Winsor, Kelsey
Welke, Bethany
Ullman, David J.
Publisher:
Macmillan Publishers Limited
Publication Date:
Language:
English

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Climate Change ( lcsh )
Greenland ( lcsh )
Ice Sheets ( lcsh )
Geographic Information Systems ( lcsh )

Notes

Abstract:
Varying levels of boreal summer insolation and associated Earth system feedbacks led to differing climate and ice-sheet states during late-Quaternary interglaciations. In particular, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 was an exceptionally long interglaciation and potentially had a global mean sea level 6 to 13 metres above the present level around410,000 to 400,000 years ago, implying substantial mass loss fromtheGreenland ice sheet (GIS).There are, however, nomodel simulations and only limitedproxy data, to constrain themagnitude of the GIS response to climate change during this ‘super interglacial’ 5, thus confounding efforts to assess climate/ice-sheet threshold behaviour and associated sea-level rise1. Here we show that the south GIS was drastically smaller during MIS 11 than it is now, with only a small residual ice dome over southernmost Greenland. We use the strontium–neodymium–lead isotopic composition of proglacial sediment discharged from south Greenland to constrain the provenance of terrigenous silt deposited on the Eirik Drift, a sedimentary depositoff the southGreenlandmargin.We identify amajor reduction in sediment input derived from south Greenland’s Precambrian bedrock terranes, probably reflecting the cessation of subglacial erosion and sediment transport as a result of near-complete deglaciation of south Greenland. Comparison with ice-sheet configurations from numerical models,9–12 suggests that the GIS lost about 4.5 to 6 metres of sea-level-equivalent volume during MIS 11. This is evidence for late-Quaternary GIS collapse after it crossed a climate/ice-sheet stability threshold thatmayhave beennomore than several degrees above pre-industrial temperature ( English )

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Florida International University
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