Description: This archive contains data files for the sediment properties (distribution and grain size) and bedrock geology for the areas covered by North American ice sheets (including Greenland and Iceland). These datasets are distributed as shapefiles and NetCDF files. These files are intended for use in ice sheet models.

Description: This study mainly focuses on the millennial-scale climate variability influence on the Northern Hemisphere ice sheet evolution during the past glacial-interglacial cycles. We use the 3D thermodynamical Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) version 0.7.3 to simulate the ice sheets. An index method is used to generate the climate between these states to force the model. In this method, the time-dependent climate evolution is represented by the combination of a time series and two extreme climate conditions. We conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, the ice sheet model is forced with climate that contains millennial-scale oscillations (GL_hf). In the other experiment, the millennial-scale oscillations are removed (GL_lf). The results show that the simulated ice sheet volume is significantly reduced when forced with large amplitude climate fluctuations compared to the case without. Sensitivity experiments are also conducted to see how the amplitude of climate noise affects the simulated ice sheets.

Description: This dataset includes paleo-topography reconstructions for the past 80000 years, at 2500 year time steps. These datasets include ice thickness calculated using the program ICESHEET, calculated sea level change from SELEN, ice sheet margin reconstructions and paleo-topography. NetCDF files of the ice thickness, deformation and sea level change, and paleo-topgraphy are included at 1 and 0.25 degree grids, and scripts are included that can be used to calculate paleo-topography at any resolution.

Description: We provide a global 0.5-degree grid of vertical land motion (in mm/a) of the LM17.3 glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) model. The radially varying earth model part is profile VM5a (Peltier et al. 2015). The ice load is different to any other GIA model and combines regional ice loads without taking care of balancing the global sea-level equivalent of all ice sheets and glaciers with that expected from paleo-sea-level indicators. The regional models are: * GLAC-1D for North America (Tarasov et al. 2012), * HUY3 for Greenland (Lecavalier et al. 2014), * GLAC #71340 for Fennoscandia/Barents Sea (Tarasov et al., 2014), * ANU-ICE for Iceland, High Mountain Areas, Siberian Mountains and Tibet (Lambeck et al. 2014), * IJ04_Patagonia for Patagonia (updated from Ivins & James 2004), * ICE-6G_C for New Zealand (Argus et al. 2014, Peltier et al. 2015), * GLAC-1D for Antarctica (Briggs et al. 2014). Additional models (W12, Whitehouse et al. 2012, and IJ05_R2, Ivins et al. 2013, for Antarctica; ANU-ICE, Lambeck et al. 2017, and NAIce, Gowan et al. 2016, for North America) were tested in the development of the model but not used in the end. Little ice age is not included nor any ice mass change during the last 100 years. The eustatic sea-level equivalent at last glacial maximum amounts to 113.8 m for all ice sheets and glaciers together. Because we use an ice model that has not been tuned to fit global constraints, it may highlight areas which cannot match commonly used GIA observations. However, we note that the earth model used in our calculations is different to the earth model used in the development of some regional ice models, e.g. HUY3, ANU-ICE, IJ04_Patagonia (see respective references), thus some differences can be related to this. The LM17.3 model was introduced in Jäggi et al. (2019), and its DDK5-filtered geoid and water heights can be found in the EGSIEM plotter (http://plot.egsiem.eu/index.php?p=timeseries). The GIA model uses material compressibility and includes time-dependent coastlines and rotational feedback. The vertical land motion can be used/tested in sea-level investigations and projections. Work towards a model that incorporates 3D earth structure, and an updated ice model, is ongoing.

Description: The evolution of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets through the last glacial cycle is simulated with the glacial index method by using the climate forcing from one General Circulation Model, COSMOS. By comparing the simulated results to geological reconstructions, we first show that the modelled climate is capable of capturing the main features of the ice-sheet evolution. However, large deviations exist, likely due to the absence of nonlinear interactions between ice sheet and other climate components. The model uncertainties of the climate forcing are examined using the output from nine climate models from the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase III. The results show a large variability in simulated ice sheets between the different models. We find that the ice-sheet extent pattern resembles summer surface air temperature pattern at the Last Glacial Maximum, confirming the dominant role of surface ablation process for high-latitude Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. This study shows the importance of the upper boundary condition for ice-sheet modelling, and implies that careful constraints on climate output is essential for simulating realistic glacial Northern Hemisphere ice sheets.

Description: Rapid monsoon changes since the last deglaciation remain poorly constrained due to the scarcity of geological archives. Here we present a high-resolution scanning X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of a 13.5 m terrace succession on the western Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) to infer rapid monsoon changes since the last deglaciation. Our results indicate that Rb∕Sr and Zr∕Rb are sensitive indicators of chemical weathering and wind sorting, respectively, which are further linked to the strength of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). During the last deglaciation, two cold intervals of the Heinrich event 1 and Younger Dryas were characterized by intensified winter monsoon and weakened summer monsoon. The EAWM gradually weakened at the beginning of the Holocene, while the EASM remained steady till 9.9 ka and then grew stronger. Both the EASM and EAWM intensities were relatively weak during the Middle Holocene, indicating a mid-Holocene climatic optimum. Rb∕Sr and Zr∕Rb exhibit an antiphase relationship between the summer and winter monsoon changes on a centennial timescale during 16–1 ka. Comparison of these monsoon changes with solar activity and North Atlantic cooling events reveals that both factors can lead to abrupt changes on a centennial timescale in the Early Holocene. During the Late Holocene, North Atlantic cooling became the major forcing of centennial monsoon events.

Description: Along the margins of continental ice sheets, lakes formed in isostatically depressed basins duringglacial retreat. Their shorelines and extent are sensitive to the ice margin and the glacial history of the region.Proglacial lakes, in turn, also impact the glacial isostatic adjustment due to loading, and ice dynamics by posing amarine‐like boundary condition at the ice margin. In this study we present a tool that efficiently identifies lake basinsand the corresponding maximum water level for a given ice sheet and topography reconstruction. This algorithm,called the LakeCC model, iteratively checks the whole map for a set of increasing water levels and fills isolated basinsuntil they overflow into the ocean. We apply it to the present‐day Great Lakes and the results show good agreement(∼1−4%) with measured lake volume and depth. We then apply it to two topography reconstructions of NorthAmerica between the Last Glacial Maximum and the present. The model successfully reconstructs glacial lakes suchas Lake Agassiz, Lake McConnell and the predecessors of the Great Lakes. LakeCC can be used to judge the quality ofice sheet reconstructions.

Description: Evidence from proxy records indicates that millennial‐scale abrupt climate shifts, called Dansgaard‐Oeschger events, happened during past glacial cycles. Various studies have been conducted to uncover the physical mechanism behind them, based on the assumption that climate mean state determines the variability. However, our study shows that the Dansgaard‐Oeschger events can regulate the mean state of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets. Sensitivity experiments show that the simulated mean state is influenced by the amplitude of the climatic noise. The most likely cause of this phenomenon is the nonlinear response of the surface mass balance to temperature. It could also cause the retreat processes to be faster than the buildup processes within a glacial cycle. We propose that the climate variability hindered ice sheet development and prevented the Earth system from entering a full glacial state from Marine Isotope Stage 4 to Marine Isotope Stage 3 about 60,000 years ago.

Description: The ice–substrate interface is an important boundary condition for ice sheet modelling. The substrate affects the ice sheet by allowing sliding through sediment deformation and accommodating the storage and drainage of subglacial water. We present three datasets on a 1 : 5 000 000 scale with different geological parameters for the region that was covered by the ice sheets in North America, including Greenland and Iceland. The first dataset includes the distribution of surficial sediments, which is separated into continuous, discontinuous and predominantly rock categories. The second dataset includes sediment grain size properties, which is divided into three classes: clay, silt and sand, based on the dominant grain size of the fine fraction of the glacial sediments. The third dataset is the generalized bedrock geology. We demonstrate the utility of these datasets for governing ice sheet dynamics by using an ice sheet model with a simulation that extends through the last glacial cycle. In order to demonstrate the importance of the basal boundary conditions for ice sheet modelling, we changed the shear friction angle to account for a weaker substrate and found changes up to 40 % in ice thickness compared to a reference run. Although incorporation of the ice–bed boundary remains model dependent, our dataset provides an observational baseline for improving a critical weakness in current ice sheet modelling (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.895889, Gowan et al., 2018b).

Description: Widespread mismatches between proxy-based and modelling studies of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) has limited better understanding about interglacial-glacial climate change. In this study, we incorporate non-breaking surface waves (NBW) induced mixing into an ocean model to assess the potential role of waves in changing a simulation of LGM upper oceans. Our results show a substantial 40 m subsurface warming introduced by surface waves in LGM summer, with larger magnitudes relative to the present-day ocean. At the ocean surface, according to the comparison between the proxy data and our simulations, the incorporation of the surface wave process into models can potentially decrease the model-data discrepancy for the LGM ocean. Therefore, our findings suggest that the inclusion of NBW is helpful in simulating glacial oceans.