A High Arctic inner shelf–fjord system from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present: Bessel Fjord and southwest Dove Bugt, northeastern Greenland

Abstract

The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) responds rapidly to the present climate; therefore, its response to the predicted future warming is of concern. To learn more about the impact of future climatic warming on the ice sheet, decoding its behavior during past periods of warmer than present climate is important. However, due to the scarcity of marine studies reconstructing ice sheet conditions on the Northeast Greenland shelf and adjacent fjords, the timing of the deglaciation over marine regions and its connection to forcing factors remain poorly constrained. This includes data collected in fjords that encompass the Holocene thermal maximum (HTM), a period in which the climate was warmer than it is at present. This paper aims to use new bathymetric data and the analysis of sediment gravity cores to enhance our understanding of ice dynamics of the GrIS in a fjord and inner shelf environment as well as give insight into the timing of deglaciation and provide a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of southwestern Dove Bugt and Bessel Fjord since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). North–south-oriented glacial lineations and the absence of pronounced moraines in southwest Dove Bugt, an inner continental shelf embayment (trough), suggest the southwards and offshore flow of Storstrømmen, the southern branch of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). Sedimentological data suggest that an ice body, theorized to be the NEGIS, may have retreated from the region slightly before ∼ 11.4 cal ka BP. The seabed morphology of Bessel Fjord, a fjord terminating in southern Dove Bugt, includes numerous basins separated by thresholds. The position of basin thresholds, which include some recessional moraines, suggest that the GrIS had undergone multiple halts or readvances during deglaciation, likely during one of the cold events identified in the Greenland Summit temperature records. A minimum age of 7.1 cal ka BP is proposed for the retreat of ice through the fjord to or west of its present-day position in the Bessel Fjord catchment area. This suggests that the GrIS retreated from the marine realm in Early Holocene, around the onset of the HTM in this region, a period when the mean July temperature was at least 2–3 ∘C higher than at present and remained at or west of this onshore position for the remainder of the Holocene. The transition from predominantly mud to muddy sand layers in a mid-fjord core at ∼ 4 cal ka BP may be the result of increased sediment input from nearby and growing ice caps. This shift may suggest that in the Late Holocene (Meghalayan), a period characterized by a temperature drop to modern values, ice caps in Bessel Fjord probably fluctuated with greater sensitivity to climatic conditions than the northeastern sector of the GrIS.