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Rapid early Holocene deglaciation of the Laurentide ice sheet

Abstract

The demise of the Laurentide ice sheet during the early Holocene epoch is the most recent and best constrained disappearance of a large ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus allows an assessment of rates of ice-sheet decay as well as attendant contributions to sea level rise. Here, we use terrestrial and marine records of the deglaciation to identify two periods of rapid melting during the final demise of the Laurentide ice sheet, when melting ice contributed about 1.3 and 0.7 cm of sea level rise per year, respectively. Our simulations with a fully coupled ocean–atmosphere model suggest that increased ablation due to enhanced early Holocene boreal summer insolation was the predominant cause of Laurentide ice-sheet retreat. Although the surface radiative forcing in boreal summer during the early Holocene is twice as large as the greenhouse-gas forcing expected by the year 2100, the associated increase in summer surface air temperatures is very similar. We conclude that our geologic evidence for a rapid retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet may therefore describe a prehistoric precedent for mass balance changes of the Greenland ice sheet over the coming century.

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Figure 1: Early Holocene terrestrial and marine records.
Figure 2: LIS topography and mass balance.
Figure 3: ModelE-R Output Delta Maps between 9 kyr BP and the pre-industrial era.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank J. Stoner for discussion of Orphan Knoll cores, and L. Keigwin and L. Skinner for sharing data. This research was financially supported by National Science Foundation grants ATM-05-01351 & ATM-05-01241 to D.W.O. and G.A.S., start-up funds from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Postdoctoral Scholarship to A.E.C., and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute (D.W.O. and R.E.C.).

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Contributions

A.E.C. compiled terrestrial and marine records of LIS retreat. A.N.L. and G.A.S. developed the AOGCM model. A.N.L. initiated and analysed the 9 kyr BP simulations. A.N.L., G.A.S., A.E.C. and J.M.L. designed model boundary conditions. A.E.C., R.E.C., E.A.O. and D.W.O. compiled oxygen isotope data. A.N.L., A.E.C. and F.S.A. interpreted LIS mass balance. All authors collaborated on the text.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anders E. Carlson.

Supplementary information

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Supplementary figures S1-S4 and tables S1-S2 (PDF 5338 kb)

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Carlson, A., LeGrande, A., Oppo, D. et al. Rapid early Holocene deglaciation of the Laurentide ice sheet. Nature Geosci 1, 620–624 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo285

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