Description: The Pliocene and Early Pleistocene, between 5.3 and 0.8 million years ago, span a transition from a global climate state that was 2-3 °C warmer than present with limited ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere to one that was characterized by continental-scale glaciations at both poles. Growth and decay of these ice sheets was paced by variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun. However, the nature of the influence of orbital forcing on the ice sheets is unclear, particularly in light of the absence of a strong 20,000-year precession signal in geologic records of global ice volume and sea level. Here we present a record of the rate of accumulation of iceberg-rafted debris offshore from the East Antarctic ice sheet, adjacent to the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, between 4.3 and 2.2 million years ago. We infer that maximum iceberg debris accumulation is associated with the enhanced calving of icebergs during ice-sheet margin retreat. In the warmer part of the record, between 4.3 and 3.5 million years ago, spectral analyses show a dominant periodicity of about 40,000 years. Subsequently, the powers of the 100,000-year and 20,000-year signals strengthen. We suggest that, as the Southern Ocean cooled between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago, the development of a perennial sea-ice field limited the oceanic forcing of the ice sheet. After this threshold was crossed, substantial retreat of the East Antarctic ice sheet occurred only during austral summer insolation maxima, as controlled by the precession cycle.

Description: Warm intervals within the Pliocene epoch (5.33-2.58 million years ago) were characterized by global temperatures comparable to those predicted for the end of this century (Haywood and Valdes, doi:10.1016/S0012-821X(03)00685-X) and atmospheric CO2 concentrations similar to today (Seki et al., 2010, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2010.01.037; Bartoli et al., 2011, doi:10.1029/2010PA002055; Pagani et al., 2010, doi:10.1038/ngeo724). Estimates for global sea level highstands during these times (Miller et al., 2012, doi:10.1130/G32869.1) imply possible retreat of the East Antarctic ice sheet, but ice-proximal evidence from the Antarctic margin is scarce. Here we present new data from Pliocene marine sediments recovered offshore of Adélie Land, East Antarctica, that reveal dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the vicinity of the low-lying Wilkes Subglacial Basin during times of past climatic warmth. Sedimentary sequences deposited between 5.3 and 3.3 million years ago indicate increases in Southern Ocean surface water productivity, associated with elevated circum-Antarctic temperatures. The geochemical provenance of detrital material deposited during these warm intervals suggests active erosion of continental bedrock from within the Wilkes Subglacial Basin, an area today buried beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet. We interpret this erosion to be associated with retreat of the ice sheet margin several hundreds of kilometres inland and conclude that the East Antarctic ice sheet was sensitive to climatic warmth during the Pliocene.

Description: Establishing an accurate chronostratigraphy is essential in reconstructing paleoenvironmental changes in the Arctic Ocean. This requisition, however, has been impeded by the lack of biogenic remnants such as calcareous and siliceous microfossils, as well as alteration of paleomagnetic properties by post-depositional processes. Consequently, foundation of chronostratigraphy in the Arctic Ocean has been mostly relying on stratigraphic correlations. This study examines lithological features and physical properties of sediments of gravity core ARA03B-41GC02 collected in the Makarov Basin and correlates with previously studied cores from the western Arctic Ocean, in order to establish an age model that could eventually facilitate a precise reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes in the western Arctic Ocean. Age control in the uppermost part was determined by AMS 14C dating of planktonic foraminifera and inter-core correlation was conducted in the upper ca. 3.8 m of the core which corresponded to MIS 15. Age constraints older than MIS 15 were treated using cyclostratigraphic model based on Mn-δ18O stack comparison, assuming that brown and high Mn concentration layers represent generally interglacial or interstadial periods. Based on our result, the core bottom corresponds to MIS 28 with an average sedimentation rate of ca. 0.5 cm/ky. The first appearance of detrital carbonate, planktonic foraminifera, and benthic foraminifera occurred during MIS 16, 11, and 7, respectively. MIS 16 is known as the coldest glacial period when δ18O of the LR04 stack first becomes heavier than 5‰; the occurrence of detrital carbonate likely transported from the Canadian Arctic indicates the initial buildup of the large ice sheets in the North America during this time. Since MIS 11 which is known as the warmest interglacial period during the late Pleistocene in the Northern Hemisphere, the appearance of planktonic foraminifera represents the warmer condition during interglacial periods in the western central Arctic Ocean. Additional geochemical and mineralogical proxies need to be conducted for better understanding of depositional environments and sediment provenance as well as transport pathways.

Description: Sedimentary stratigraphy and facies analysis along with seismostratigraphic and multibeam bathymetry data are used to reconstruct the last glacial impact on the Arliss Plateau (AP) and attendant sedimentation in the adjacent Chukchi Basin (CB) in the western Arctic Ocean off the East Siberian margin. Sediment core ARA02B/16B-GC from the AP lower slope captures glacier-related depositional history during the last estimated ca. 100 ka (Marine Isotope Stage, MIS 1 to 5c) based on regional lithostratigraphic correlation. The sedimentary record shows distinguishable interglacial (interstadial) and glacial (stadial) patterns. The identified sedimentary facies reflect several modes of glaciogenic deposition by drifting icebergs, suspension settling from turbid meltwater plumes and/or detached underflows, and turbidity currents. Based on strong seismic reflectors related to lithological boundaries, a downslope subbottom profile from AP to CB is divided into seismostratigraphic units (SSU) 1 and 2 corresponding in the core record to MIS 1e3 and MIS 3-5c, respectively. An acoustically transparent lens within SSU 2 correlates on the upper slope to debris lobes downslope from the AP top covered by megascale glacial lineations. This geomorphic/sedimentary pattern indicates a glacial erosional impact on the AP and proglacial deposition of eroded sediments on the slope and in the basin. Based on the developed sediment stratigraphy and facies analysis, the last debris lobe horizon was deposited in glacial/deglacial environments during late MIS 4 to early MIS 3. The absence of similar glaciogenic debris lobes within SSU 1 indicates no direct glacial impact on the AP during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). These results suggest that the last glacial erosion of the AP occurred during or immediately afterMIS 4, possibly related to major glaciation in northern Siberia at ~50e70 ka.

Description: The Quaternary paleoenvironmental history of the Arctic Ocean remains uncertain, mainly due to the limited chronological constraints, especially beyond the 14C dating limits of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The difficulty in establishing reliable chronostratigraphies is mainly attributed to low sedimentation rates and diagenetic sediment changes, resulting in very poor preservation of microfossils and altered paleomagnetic re-cords. In the absence of independent chronostratigraphic data, the age model of Pleistocene sediments from the Arctic Ocean is mainly based on cyclostratigraphy, which relates lithologic changes to climatic variability on orbital time scales. In this study, we used the Mn/Al record measured from the sediment core ARA03B-41GC retrieved from the Makarov Basin in the western Arctic Ocean. The Mn/Al variation was tuned to the global benthic oxygen isotope stack (LR04) curve under different assumptions for computational correlation. Regardless of assumptions, our computational approach led to similar ages of about 600–1,000 ka for the bottom part of the core. These age models were up to about 200 ka older than those derived from lithostratigraphic approaches. Interestingly, our new age models show that the Ca/Al peak, a proxy for a detrital input from the Laurentide Ice Sheet, first occurred about 150 ka earlier than those previously proposed. Therefore, our results suggest that the glaciers in northern North America developed more extensively at about 810 ka than in earlier glacial periods, and influenced the sedimentary and paleoceanographic environments of the Arctic Ocean much earlier than previously thought. In order to establish a more comprehensive age model, more work is needed to validate our findings with different sediment cores recovered from the western Arctic Ocean.

Description: The structural evolution of Lake Van Basin, eastern Turkey, was reconstructed based on seismic reflection profiles through the sedimentary fill as well as from newly acquired multibeam echosounder data. The major sub-basins (Tatvan Basin and Northern Basin) of Lake Van, bound by NE-trending faults with normal components, formed during the past ~600 ka probably due to extensional tectonics resulting from lithospheric thinning and mantle upwelling related to the westward escape of Anatolia. Rapid extension and subsidence during early lake formation led to the opening of the two sub-basins. Two major, still active volcanoes (Nemrut and Süphan) grew close to the lake basins approximately synchronously, their explosive deposits making up 〉20 % of the drilled upper 220 m of the ca. 550-m-thick sedimentary fill. During basin development, extension and subsidence alternated with compressional periods, particularly between ~340 and 290 ka and sometime before ~14 ka, when normal fault movements reversed and gentle anticlines formed as a result of inversion. The ~14 ka event was accompanied by widespread uplift and erosion along the northeastern margin of the lake, and substantial erosion took place on the crests of the folds. A series of closely spaced eruptions of Süphan volcano occurred synchronously suggesting a causal relationship. Compression is still prevalent inside and around Lake Van as evidenced by recent faults offsetting the lake floor and by recent devastating earthquakes along their onshore continuations. New, high-resolution bathymetry data from Lake Van reveal the morphology of the Northern Ridge and provide strong evidence for ongoing transpression on a dextral strike-slip fault as documented by the occurrence of several pop-up structures along the ridge.