Abstract
The sequence of events leading to the development of the modern Arctic Ocean ice-cover is imperfectly understood. Glacial-marine sediment was deposited during the early Pliocene and perhaps by the end of the late Miocene and this sediment type has continued to accumulate throughout the late Cenozoic to the present. The time of formation of the ocean’s ice-cover, whether ice has been continually present, and the relationship of the ocean’s sediment to the ice-cover have been debated. How geologically stable is the ice-cover? Is there evidence for significant change in the ice-cover during the late Cenozoic?
Arctic ice-cover origination probably depended upon such diverse activity as the formation of seasonal ice on Greenland, restricted circulation between the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, temperature/salinity changes in the North Atlantic — Greenland Sea, and enhancement of any or all of these events by orbitally driven insolation minima. Together with factors not recognized or poorly understood they resulted in the development of the first Arctic Ocean ice-cover.
Interpretations of the Arctic Ocean condition during the late Cenozoic include the idea of a continual warm ocean until approximately 2 Ma, a continually cold ocean with no permanent ice until 0.85 Ma, a probable warming of a cold Arctic Ocean around its margins at approximately 2 Ma, and a deep ocean warming event that resulted from increased ventilation of the Arctic Ocean at approximately 1.5 Ma. All of these ideas contrast, at least in part, with an unique idea that 1000 m thick ice occupied most of the Arctic Basin during the Pleistocene.
There are questions concerning the chronology for most of these interpretations, and with the limited evidence available it is possible that the proposed deep ocean ventilation at approximately 1.5 Ma and the warming of the Arctic borderlands interpreted to have occurred at approximately 2 Ma could represent a single event. Time of the initial late Cenozoic ice-cover formation may not be fixed without a major drilling activity in the central Arctic Ocean.
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Clark, D.L. (1990). Stability of the Arctic Ocean Ice-Cover and Pleistocene Warming Events: Outlining the Problem. In: Bleil, U., Thiede, J. (eds) Geological History of the Polar Oceans: Arctic versus Antarctic. NATO ASI Series, vol 308. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2029-3_15
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