Grinding glaciers transformed Arctic ocean currents - new study

Scraping and erosion by glaciers removed massive amounts of bedrock across the Arctic, eventually opening a route for Atlantic water to reach the Arctic, a team of iC3 researchers has found.  

Over much of the past fifty million years, the area known today as the Barents Sea was above sea level, a combination of observational data and modelling shows.  

(Check out this interactive reconstruction of the Barents Shelf landscape evolution.)

Just under a million years ago, the repeated advance and retreat of glaciers had finally ground down and pushed away so much rock and sediments that the waves permanently closed over the land. This opened up a new pathway for relatively warm Atlantic water to reach the Arctic Ocean, strongly impacting the regional climate.  

“There have been around 50 ice ages in the region during the last three million years,” said Henry Patton from the iC3 Polar Research Hub, lead author of the study. “During this blink-of-an-eye within the geological past, we found that ice sheets had an immense impact."

"They scraped off 3.7 trillion tons of rocks and sediments. Without this grinding ice, we would be able to ski from mainland Norway to Svalbard today.” 

The study has important implications for climate modelling because landscape transformations that block or redirect oceanic circulation can lead to major shifts in the global climate.  

“Ocean circulation patterns profoundly affect the global climate,” said Monica Winsborrow, co-author of the study. “Getting a clearer picture of the deep history of the Arctic is essential for fine-tuning the climate models we use today.”  

“Our findings and data will feed into the new Into the Blue project, and will inform iC3 colleagues who are currently modelling the complex interactions between ice, land, ocean, and atmosphere in the Arctic," she explained.

"As the world continues to heat up, we urgently need strong models that can help us to predict and prepare for the changes that lie ahead.” 

The study “Glacial erosion and quaternary landscape development of the Eurasian Arctic” involved several iC3 researchers as well as external experts. It has been published open access in the journal Earth-Science Reviews.  Make sure to also check out the ice sheet visualisation here.