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The importance of Canadian Arctic Archipelago gateways for glacial expansion in Scandinavia

Abstract

The last glacial cycle began around 116,000 years before present during a period with low incoming solar radiation in Northern Hemisphere summer. Following the glacial inception in North America, the marine sediment record depicts a weakening of the high-latitude ocean overturning circulation and a multi-millennial eastward progression of glaciation across the North Atlantic basin. Modelling studies have shown that reduced solar radiation can initiate inception in North America and Siberia; however, the proximity to the temperate North Atlantic typically precludes ice growth in Scandinavia. Using a coupled Earth-system–ice-sheet model, we show that ice forming in North America may help facilitate glacial expansion in Scandinavia. As large coherent ice masses form and start filling the ocean gateways in the Canadian Archipelago, the transport of comparatively fresh North Pacific and Arctic water through the archipelago is diverted east of Greenland, resulting in a freshening of North Atlantic deep convection regions, sea-ice expansion and a substantial cooling that is sufficient to trigger glacial inception in Scandinavia. This mechanism may also help explain the Younger Dryas cold reversal and the rapid regrowth of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet following several warm events in the last glacial period.

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Fig. 1: Time series of proxy data across the inception interval.
Fig. 2: Map of regions and major currents in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes.
Fig. 3: Climate response to 116 ka insolation and greenhouse gas forcing and to the closing of the CAA ocean gateways.
Fig. 4: Simulated ice-sheet thickness in the simulation with open and closed ocean gateways in the CAA, respectively.

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Data availability

CESM2 data from the pre-industrial and 116 ka simulations with open and closed CAA gateways are available via Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6563697. Original repositories for the pre-industrial simulation and proxy datasets may be found at https://www.earthsystemgrid.org/dataset/ucar.cgd.cesm2.b.e21.B1850.f09_g17.CMIP6-piControl.001.html, vo.imcce.fr/insola/earth/online/earth/earth.html, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.854045, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.55501, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.840727, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.777694, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.742858.

Code availability

The simulations in this study were produced with the publicly released version of CESM2.1.1, which is open-source software, freely available at http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/.

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Acknowledgements

The CESM project is supported primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This material is based on work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is a major facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement no. 1852977. Computing and data storage resources, including the Cheyenne supercomputer (https://doi.org/10.5065/D6RX99HX), were provided by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at NCAR. The authors extend a special thanks to both the CESM Land Ice Working Group (LIWG) and the Paleoclimate Working Group (PaleoWG) for donating computer time to extend these simulations beyond their original length.

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Authors

Contributions

M.L. conceptualized the project, developed boundary conditions, ran the simulations, analysed output data and wrote the original draft of the manuscript. D.M.T. helped with interpretation of proxy data and wrote the corresponding section in the manuscript. B.L.O.-B. helped finance parts of the project. E.C.B. helped develop the ocean boundary conditions for the closed gateways experiment. All authors commented on the final draft.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcus Lofverstrom.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Evan Gowan, Chris R Stokes and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Latitudinal variations in top-of-atmosphere insolation as a function of month of year.

(a) full pre-industrial (1850 CE) top-of-atmosphere insolation, and (b) difference in top-of-atmosphere insolation between the 116 ka and pre-industrial orbital configurations. Countour lines in panel b replicate the contour lines of the full pre-industrial insolation in panel a.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Map of land-ocean distribution on the ocean-model grid.

Land and ocean grid points are indicated by white and black colour, respectively. Grid points that are switched from ocean to land in the closed CAA simulation are indicated by red colour. The background map is showing the land-ocean boundary on the nominal 1-degree ocean model grid.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Spatial and temporal evolution of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets.

Panels a-e show the ice evolution in the simulation with open CAA gateways at model year (a) 30, (b) 100, (c) 300, (d) 500, and (e) 815 (the latter is the same as Fig. 4a). Panel (f) shows the corresponding Northern Hemisphere ice distribution at model year 815 in the simulation with closed CAA gateways (same as Fig. 4c) where ice has started forming in the Scandinavian mountains. The background map is showing topography and bathymetry as represented on the 4-km ice-sheet model grid. In the simulation with closed CAA gateways, inception occurs after 725 model years in the high-elevation regions of southern Norway and after 739 model years in northern Norway (see also Extended Data Fig. 8).

Extended Data Fig. 4 Spatial and temporal evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

(a) 30 year annual average AMOC from the pre-industrial control simulation (arrows indicate the flow direction); (b) difference between the 116 ka simulation with open CAA gateways and the pre-industrial simulation; (d) difference between the 116 ka simulations with closed and open CAA gateways. Panel (c) shows the temporal evolution of the maximum overturning strength between 60N and 80N (white box in panel a) in the pre-industrial (black), open CAA (red), and closed CAA (blue) simulations, respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Differences in surface ocean freshwater budget between the open CAA and the pre-industrial control simulation.

(a) Difference in total freshwater flux (sum of panels b-f; same as Fig. 3b) and the contribution from: (b) meltwater fluxes from seasonal sea ice melting, (c) precipitation, (d) evaporation, (e) river transport, and (f) snow capping. Stippling indicates differences that are not significant at the 95% level. Mapping software: Cartopy with Natural Earth shapefiles.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Differences in surface ocean freshwater budget between the 116 ka simulations with closed and open CAA gateways.

(a) Difference in total freshwater flux (sum of panels b-f; same as Fig. 3e) and the contribution from: (b) meltwater fluxes from seasonal sea ice melting, (c) precipitation, (d) evaporation, (e) river transport, and (f) snow capping. Stippling indicates differences that are not significant at the 95% level. Mapping software: Cartopy with Natural Earth shapefiles.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Comparison of June-August (JJA) mean surface temperature.

from (a) ERA-Interim reanalysis product61 (averaged over years 1979-2014) and (b) the pre-industrial simulation; surface temperature anomalies in the 116 ka simulations with (c) open and (d) closed CAA gateways. Arrows in panels (c) and (d) indicate 850 hPa horizontal wind vectors (full zonal and meridional wind components in open CAA and closed CAA, respectively). Red arrows between 55–80N & 15W–50E roughly indicate the region where cool temperatures in the Nordic Seas are advected into Scandinavia, yielding favorable conditions for glacial inception in the highland regions of Norway and Sweden in the simulation with closed CAA gateways (panel d). Mapping software: Cartopy with Natural Earth shapefiles.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Timeseries of annually integrated temperature in the Scandinavian Mountains above 1000 m elevation.

Temperature data was averaged over all grid cells where the topography in the Scandinavian mountain range is over 1000 m elevation (region: 58–78N; 13W–20E) on the 4-km ice-sheet model grid (see Methods). Light colours indicate annually resolved temperature, and heavy lines show 10-year rolling averages to highlight the long-term temperature trend. The dashed and dotted vertical lines (at model years 725 and 739, respectively) indicate inception at the southern and the northern locations in the simulation with closed CAA gateways (see Fig. 4). Note that the pre-industrial control simulation was not run with the extended ice-sheet model grid, hence we do not have access to downscaled temperature data from that simulation. Moreover, the ice-sheet model only outputs annual mean temperature, which precludes a seasonal decomposition.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Comparison of annual mean precipitation.

(a) Full precipitation (liquid+solid) from the ERA-Interim reanalysis product61 (averaged over years 1979-2014) and (b) the pre-industrial simulation; precipitation anomalies in the 116 ka simulation with (c) open CAA and (d) closed CAA ocean gateways, respectively. Stippling in panels (c) and (d) indicates differences that are not significant at the 95% level. Mapping software: Cartopy with Natural Earth shapefiles.

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Lofverstrom, M., Thompson, D.M., Otto-Bliesner, B.L. et al. The importance of Canadian Arctic Archipelago gateways for glacial expansion in Scandinavia. Nat. Geosci. 15, 482–488 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00956-9

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