Glacial dropstones in the western Tethys during the late Aptian–early Albian cold snap

Glacial dropstones in the western Tethys during the late Aptian–early Albian cold snap: Palaeoclimate and palaeogeographic implications for the mid-Cretaceous

Authors:

Rodríguez-López et al

Abstract:

The late Jurassic–early Cretaceous is commonly considered the only cold climatic interval in Earth history without any direct evidence of polar ice. A newly discovered dropstone-bearing interval from the subtropical Iberian Basin (western Tethys) is described and provides evidence of contemporaneous polar glaciation. This interval is correlated laterally for 4.8 km and contains a boulder and two cobble-sized quartzite dropstones that are encased in mid-Cretaceous fissile black shales and fine-grained sandstones. Based on previously published dimensions of similar large clasts, only glacial dropstones and impact ejecta blocks reach the dimensions of the boulder-sized dropstone reported from Iberia. The dropstones show morphological features compatible with glacial transport and abrasion in a subglacial setting which closely resembles the features observed in recent glacial boulders exposed near the snouts of glaciers in Iceland. These Late Aptian dropstones from Spain correlate with many other similar erratics in the northern and southern palaeohemispheres, and suggest that ice sheets formed around the palaeo-North Pole during certain periods of the early Cretaceous. Our results and associated evidence such as the occurrence of glendonites, tillites, moderate- to high-amplitude sea-level oscillations worldwide, minimum pCO2 concentrations, variation in calcareous nannofossil assemblages from low and high latitudes and isotopic excursions suggest that during the mid-Cretaceous there were periods of ice growth and decay that influenced the palaeotemperature, palaeoecology and sedimentology of the marine realm. The new data from Iberia are supported by recent results from Arctic Canada that indicate cool shelves and a mid-Cretaceous cold snap that developed for ~ 6 Myr between 118 and 112 Ma. The late Aptian dropstones reported in eastern Iberia were likely transported from high northern latitudes towards subtropical ones in the western Tethys by an extreme iceberg drift similar to those occurring at the present day in the Atlantic Ocean. Icebergs released from a northern fringing ice sheet may have travelled southwards through the Greenland–Norwegian Seaway.

At the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, Antarctica had a Massive Ice-Shelf Collapse

In a new study that provides clues about how Antarctica's nation-sized Ross Ice Shelf might respond to a warming climate, U.S. and Japanese oceanographers have shown that a 100,000-square-mile section of the ice shelf broke apart within 1,500 years during a warming period after the last ice age.

The Ross Ice Shelf is the world's largest ice shelf, a vast floating extension of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is about the size of France. But at the end of the last ice age, it extended much farther north and covered the entire Ross Sea.

A study in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details how the ice shelf shrank during a period of climate warming following the ice age. The paper was co-authored by Rice University oceanographer John Anderson, postdoctoral research associate Lauren Simkins, graduate student Lindsay Prothro and colleagues at the University of Tokyo.

"At the height of the last ice age, we know that the sheet of ice covering the Antarctic continent was larger and thicker than it is today," said Anderson, Rice's Maurice Ewing Professor of Oceanography and professor of Earth science. "This continent-enveloping ice sheet extended all the way to the continental shelf, and in western Antarctica it filled the entire Ross Sea basin."

While people typically think of continents as landmasses that rise above the sea, the margins of all continents, including Antarctica, extend well beyond their shores to include continental shelves, subsea aprons that are far more shallow than the deep ocean abysses that mark the continental boundary.

In western Antarctica, the Ross Sea is characterized by a continental shelf that extends nearly 1,000 miles from the coast and is as much as 3,500 feet deep. Anderson said the geologic record shows that as recently as 18,000 years ago the entire Ross basin was filled with ice that was so thick and heavy it was grounded on the seafloor all the way to the edge of the continental shelf.

"We found that about 10,000 years ago, this thick, grounded ice sheet broke apart in dramatic fashion," Anderson said. "The evidence shows that an armada of icebergs -- each at least twice as tall as the Empire State Building -- was pushed out en masse. We know this because this part of the Ross Sea is about 550 meters (1,804 feet) deep, and the icebergs were so large and so tightly packed that they gouged huge furrows into the seafloor as they moved north."

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How Much of the Antarctic Marine Ice Retreat in the Ross Sea at the end of the Pleistocene Quaternary Ice Age

Antarctic marine ice-sheet retreat in the Ross Sea during the early Holocene

Authors:

McKay et al

Abstract:

Geological constraints on the timing of retreat of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) Antarctic Ice Sheets provide critical insights into the processes controlling marine-based ice-sheet retreat. The over-deepened, landward-sloping bathymetry of Antarctica's continental shelves is an ideal configuration for marine ice-sheet instability, with the potential for past and future ice-sheet collapse and accelerated sea-level rise. However, the chronology of retreat of the LGM ice sheet in the Ross Sea is largely constrained by imprecise radiocarbon chronology of bulk marine sediments or by coastal records that offer more reliable dating techniques but which may be influenced by local piedmont glaciers derived from East Antarctic outlet glaciers. Consequently, these coastal records may be ambiguous in the broader context of retreat in the central regions of the Ross Sea. Here, we present a sedimentary facies succession and foraminifera-based radiocarbon chronology from within the Ross Sea embayment that indicates glacial retreat and open-marine conditions to the east of Ross Island before 8.6 cal. (calibrated) kyr B.P., at least 1 k.y. earlier than indicated by terrestrial records in McMurdo Sound. Comparing these data to new modeling experiments, we hypothesize that marine-based ice-sheet retreat was triggered by oceanic forcings along most of the Pacific Ocean coastline of Antarctica, but continued Holocene retreat into the inner shelf region of the Ross Sea occurred primarily as a consequence of bathymetric controls on marine ice-sheet instability.

Waterfalls on an Iceberg: *cough*globalwarming*cough*

Chasing Ice Captures Incredible Glacier Calving

At 1:50 I swear I could hear the words, "And now I am FREE!  MORTALS TREMBLE AT MY COMING!"

Evidence of Iceberg Dropstones From Carboniferous/Permian Tibet

Features, provenance, and tectonic significance of Carboniferous-Permian glacial marine diamictites in the Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan block, Tibetan Plateau

Authors:

Fan et al

Abstract:

In this study, we conducted profile measurements, gravel composition analyses, and U-Pb dating on detrital zircons from a representative glacial marine diamictite in the Gangmaco–Dabure area of the Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan block, Tibetan Plateau. We conclude that the diamictite was formed in a glacial marine environment from the outer edge of the continental shelf to the continental slope and deep sea, in what is now the Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan block. Four distinct glacial-interglacial cycles were identified in the diamictite, which record a minimum of four stages of Gondwana glaciation in the area of the Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan block. Combined with regional geological information, we also conclude that during the Carboniferous-Permian, sediments containing the glacial marine diamictite derived from Gondwana, in the region extending from India to the Tethys Himalaya area, Lhasa and Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan blocks, recorded the transition from continental, neritic to abyssal environments. Gravel assemblages and U-Pb dating of detrital zircons in the glacial marine diamictite indicate that the provenance of the diamictite was Indian Gondwana. We infer that during the Late Paleozoic, the northern margin of the Indian Gondwana continued to be influenced by the Early Palaeozoic tectonic set-up, when Indian Gondwana was under an erosional regime, and the Tethys Himalaya area, Lhasa and Southern Qiangtang–Baoshan blocks were deposited on a passive continental margin.

Evidence of Mega Icebergs in the Artic From the Pleistocene

Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found between Greenland and Spitsbergen the scours left behind on the sea bed by gigantic icebergs. The five lineaments, at a depth of 1,200 metres, are the lowest-lying iceberg scours yet to be found on the Arctic sea floor. This finding provides new understanding of the dynamics of the Ice Age and the extent of the Arctic ice sheet thousands of years ago. In addition, the researchers could draw conclusions about the export of fresh water from the Arctic into the North Atlantic. The AWI scientists have published their findings in the online portal of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Whenever icebergs run aground, they leave scours on the seabed. Depending on their depth and location, those markings may continue to exist over long periods of time," explained Jan Erik Arndt, AWI bathymetrician and lead author for this paper.

It is traces exactly like this that he, together with three colleagues at AWI, discovered on the Hovgaard Ridge. The Hovgaard Ridge is a plateau in the deep Arctic Sea, located a good 400 kilometres off of Greenland's eastern coast. Found at a depth of 1,200 metres the five lineaments are the deepest iceberg scours found to date in the Arctic. The scours are as much as four kilometres long and 15 metres in depth. "Such scours are a window into the past. Thanks to these iceberg scours we now know that a few very large, but also many smaller icebergs, passed across the Hovgaard Ridge," the scientist said.

The discovery of the scours on Hovgaard Ridge was fortuitous and by no means the result of a defined search. Jan Erik Arndt and his colleagues discovered the lineaments when examining bathymetric data from the year 1990. The data were collected by the research ship Polarstern while preparing cartography for the Fram Strait. "When we examined the data once again and in greater detail, we became aware of the scours. Given their depth, it quickly became clear that we had found something very interesting," says Jan Erik Arndt.

The scientists today work with better hardware and software than what was available in the 1990s. This new technology allows closer scrutiny of the old data. That is why the scours have surfaced on the scientists' monitors only now, 24 years after the data were collected.

The scientists can, however, only roughly bracket the period within which the icebergs scoured the ridge crest. It is clear, however, that it must have taken place within the past 800,000 years. Since sea level during the glacial period was a good 120 metres lower than today, the icebergs reached to a depth of at least 1,080 metres below sea level. Since about a tenth of an iceberg will, as a rule, be exposed, AWI scientists estimate the height of the iceberg to be roughly 1,200 metres – about three times the height of the Empire State Building. "To calve such megascale icebergs, the edge of the ice sheet covering the Arctic Ocean must have been at least 1,200 metres thick," Jan Erik Arndt notes.

Today scientists search in vain for such megascale icebergs. "We currently find the largest icebergs in the Antarctic. The very biggest reach only 700 metres below the water's surface," noted the bathymetrician. One remaining riddle is the birthplace of the massive icebergs that scraped Hovgaard Ridge. The AWI scientists suggest that two areas off the northern coast of Russia are the most likely sites.

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Constant Barrage of Ice Bergs on the Antarctic Shore is Scouring Clean the Ecology

The Antarctic shore is a place of huge contrasts, as quiet, dark, and frozen winters give way to bright, clear waters, thick with algae and peppered with drifting icebergs in summer. But as the planet has warmed in the last two decades, massive losses of sea ice in winter have left icebergs free to roam for most of the year. As a result, say researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 16, boulders on the shallow seabed—once encrusted with a rich assemblage of species in intense competition for limited space—now mostly support a single species. The climate-linked increase in iceberg activity has left all other species so rare as to be almost irrelevant.

"The Antarctic Peninsula can be considered an early warning system—like a canary in a coal mine," says David Barnes of the British Antarctic Survey. "Physical changes there are amongst the most extreme and the biology considered quite sensitive, so it was always likely to be a good place to observe impacts of climate change—but impacts elsewhere are likely to be not too far behind. A lot of the planet depends on the near-shore environment, not least for food; what happens there to make it less stable is important."

Earlier studies had noted an increase in mortality of the pioneer species, Fenstrulina rugula, a rather unremarkable suspension feeder that belongs to a group sometimes referred to as moss animals. Barnes and his colleagues suspected that those losses would be more widespread. Indeed, a 2013 survey dive at a nearby spot showed large areas where no live animals could be found, the first time that had ever been reported, despite frequent diving in the area.

In the new study, the researchers detail the first assemblage-level changes coincident with increased scouring. Not one species present in 1997 has disappeared entirely, they found, yet many have become so rare as to play little role in the community. In 2013, almost all interactions (96 percent, to be exact) involved just one species, F. rugula, making it one of the simplest seabed systems to be found anywhere. In almost all of those competitive interactions, there was no clear winner or loser, because F. rugula individuals battle against each other.

Barnes says he and his colleagues were surprised to see such a large effect so quickly, given that climate change is expected to be a slowly evolving, long-term process. On that note, the losses in complexity observed along the Antarctic shores are surely the beginning of more shifts to come.

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Did Cassini See an Iceberg in Titan's Northern Sea (Ligeia Mare)?

Transient features in a Titan sea

Authors:

Hofgartner et al

Abstract:

Titan’s surface–atmosphere system bears remarkable similarities to Earth’s, the most striking being an active, global methane cycle akin to Earth’s water cycle. Like the hydrological cycle of Earth, Titan’s seasonal methane cycle is driven by changes in the distribution of solar energy. The Cassini spacecraft, which arrived at Saturn in 2004 in the midst of northern winter and southern summer, has observed surface changes, including shoreline recession, at Titan’s south pole and equator. However, active surface processes have yet to be confirmed in the lakes and seas in Titan’s north polar region. As the 2017 northern summer solstice approaches, the onset of dynamic phenomena in this region is expected. Here we present the discovery of bright features in recent Cassini RADAR data that appeared in Titan’s northern sea, Ligeia Mare, in July 2013 and disappeared in subsequent observations. We suggest that these bright features are best explained by the occurrence of ephemeral phenomena such as surface waves, rising bubbles, and suspended or floating solids. We suggest that our observations are an initial glimpse of dynamic processes that are commencing in the northern lakes and seas as summer nears in the northern hemisphere.