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10Be dating the last deglaciation of Bjørnøya, Svalbard

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Abstract

The retreat of the Barents Sea Ice Sheet was a major event in the last deglaciation of the Arctic. Numerous studies document the fine details of the seafloor that reveal a highly dynamic ice sheet somewhat analogous to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Despite detailed records of the Barents Sea Ice Sheet’s dynamics, comparatively few studies have provided chronological control that constrains its history of final collapse. We report cosmogenic 10Be exposure ages from 14 glacial erratics, nine moraine boulders and one bedrock surface from southern Bjørnøya, an island situated in the Barents Sea between Svalbard and Norway. 17 of 24 samples average 12.4 ± 0.5 ka with no significant relationship between age and elevation. We interpret the ages to represent the time when Bjørnøya, and the shallow Spitsbergenbanken upon which it sits, became finally deglaciated following break up of the Barents Sea Ice Sheet. The timing of deglaciation, overlapping with the early Younger Dryas, suggests that Younger Dryas climate change did not reverse overall glacier recession, although we cannot rule out a stillstand or re-advance during the early Younger Dryas.

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Acknowledgements

We thank William d’Andrea, Katja Baum, Willem van der Bilt, Alexander Hovland, Henriika Kivilä and Torgeir Røthe for help during fieldwork, Joseph Tulenko for help with figure 1, and Susan Zimmerman and the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for assistance with 10Be/9Be measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Jason P. Briner

  2. Department of Arctic Geology, The University Centre in Svalbard, P.O.Box. 156, 9171, Longyearbyen, Norway

    Anne Hormes

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Anne Hormes

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Correspondence to Jason P. Briner.

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Briner, J.P., Hormes, A. 10Be dating the last deglaciation of Bjørnøya, Svalbard. Arktos 4, 1–10 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41063-018-0051-1

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