Upper Cenozoic history of the Labrador Sea, Baffin Bay, and the Arctic Ocean: A paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic summary

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Abstract
Foraminifera, palynomorphs, and stable isotopes in planktonic foraminifera have been studied in piston cores from the northern Labrador Sea, southern Baffin Bay, and the Alpha Ridge region of the central Arctic Ocean. Foraminifera in cores from the Labrador Sea and southern Baffin Bay show glacial‐interglacial δ18O values similar to those reported from the Norwegian and Greenland seas. In contrast to the eastern North Atlantic Ocean, however, peaks of Subarctic foraminifera and dinoflagellates in the western North Atlantic cores show that relatively warm Atlantic surface water continued to flow into the northern Labrador Sea during the early glaciation growth phases of isotopic stages 2, 4, 6, and 8. Boreal and Subarctic pollen suggest that warm Atlantic air flowed into the northern Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay during the ice sheet growth phases. The advection of warm air masses and the presence of open waters during the summer probably provided moisture for the growth of the Laurentide, Innuitian, and Greenland ice sheets. Isotopic and microfossil records in Arctic cores can also be tentatively correlated with major high latitude north Atlantic glacial‐interglacial events. Magnetostratigraphic, palynological and amino acid dating, however, shows that sedimentation on the Alpha Ridge has been very slow during the past 0.73 m.y.; therefore, events of less than 20,000 years duration cannot be clearly discerned. Interpretation of pre‐Pleistocene paleoenvironments is further limited by the sparseness of calcareous and siliceous microfossils.

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