Summary
A detailed analysis of the δ18O record of benthic foraminifera in deep sea cores from the Norwegian Sea shows that at the end of the Eemian interglacial (isotopic substage 5e), continental ice sheets experienced a significant phase of growth, which culminated during the maximum of isotopic substage 5d. The ice-volume was then about half of that of the last glacial maximum. This indicates that the 5e/5d transition marks the inception of the glaciation over the northern hemisphere.
Subpolar planktonic foraminifera almost disappeared from the Norwegian Sea during the second half of isotopic substage 5e, indicating a cooling of surface waters, which began early in response to summer insolation changes and preceded the development of continental ice-sheets. As high temperatures prevailed south of the Greenland — Iceland — Faeroe strait, the thermal contrast between the warm North Atlantic and the cold Norwegian Sea reinforced natural cyclogenesis, which produces large snow storms over the subpolar continents.
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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Duplessy, J.C., Labeyrie, L. (1992). The Norwegian Sea Record of the Last Interglacial to Glacial Transition. In: Kukla, G.J., Went, E. (eds) Start of a Glacial. NATO ASI Series, vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76954-2_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-76954-2_13
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