Search for: All records

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was one of the coldest periods of the postglacial period in the Northern Hemisphere. Although there is increasing evidence that this time interval was associated with weakening of the subpolar gyre (SPG), the sequence of events that led to its weakened state has yet to be explained. Here, we show that the LIA was preceded by an exceptional intrusion of warm Atlantic water into the Nordic Seas in the late 1300s. The intrusion was a consequence of persistent atmospheric blocking over the North Atlantic, linked to unusually high solar activity. The warmer water led to the breakup of sea ice and calving of tidewater glaciers; weakening of the blocking anomaly in the late 1300s allowed the large volume of ice that had accumulated to be exported into the North Atlantic. This led to a weakening of the SPG, setting the stage for the subsequent LIA. 

Global warming due to anthropogenic factors can be amplified or dampened by natural climate oscillations, especially those involving sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Atlantic which vary on a multidecadal scale (Atlantic multidecadal variability, AMV). Be- cause the instrumental record of AMV is short, long-term behavior of AMV is unknown, but climatic teleconnections to regions beyond the North Atlantic offer the prospect of reconstructing AMV from high-resolution records elsewhere. Annually resolved titanium from an annually laminated sedimentary record from Ellesmere Island, Canada, shows that the record is strongly influenced by AMV via atmospheric circulation anomalies. Significant correlations between this High-Arctic proxy and other highly resolved Atlantic SST proxies demonstrate that it shares the multidecadal variability seen in the Atlantic. Our record provides a reconstruction of AMV for the past ∼3 millennia at an unprecedented time resolution, indicating North Atlantic SSTs were coldest from ∼1400–1800 CE, while current SSTs are the warmest in the past ∼2,900 y. 

Review of hydroclimate, limnology, periglacial geomorphology and permafrost monitoring in the App Linne-Gronfjorden region of Svalbard, and recommendations for future research.