Paleoceanography of the last interglacial/glacial cycle in the Polar North Atlantic

Using to its position close to the sites of waxing and waning of the major northern hemisphere ice sheets during the Late Quaternary climatic cycles, the Polar North Atlantic plays a key role in driving global change. Therefore, analyzing the present-day sedimentation processes and reconstructing the Late Quaternary paleoceanography in this region has been a focus of major scientific interest through the last fifteen years. This paper aims to combine the vast amount of new results about modern sediment fluxes, surface sediment distribution and the paleoceanographic record and to present a comprehensive overview of the paleoceanography in the Polar North Atlantic through the last 200,000 years, which is based on the basinwide analysis of carbonate and ice-rafted detritus records. During the last fifteen years the CLIMAP paleoceanographic view of the glacial Polar North Atlantic as an almost permanently isolated sea covered by heavy sea ice throughout the year has been shifted to a much more dynamic view of the environmental conditions. A meridional current system similar to the present-day conditions secured the exchange of water, ice and heat between the Polar North Atlantic and the Alantic and Arctic Oceans. Although affected by variations in strength and intensity this meridional current pattern resulted in an almost permanent presence of at least some seasonally ice-free areas, with all the consequences for e.g. marine life and deep water formation. In addition, the development of the continental ice sheets, namely the Fennoscandian and the Barents Sea ice sheets, is closely related to this dynamic circulation pattern. During the so-called Nordway events the pronounced inflow of temperate waters from the south provided moisture for the growth of the ice sheets. The most prominent of these events (Stage 6, Stage 4 and Substage 3.1/2) ended in major glaciations, reflected in the terrestrial sequences and in the deep-sea IRD records. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.