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Science 10 March 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5766, pp. 1449 - 1452
DOI: 10.1126/science.1120702
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Reports

The Last Deglaciation of the Southeastern Sector of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet

V. R. Rinterknecht,1*{dagger} P. U. Clark,1 G. M. Raisbeck,2 F. Yiou,2 A. Bitinas,3 E. J. Brook,1 L. Marks,4 V. Zelcs,5 J.-P. Lunkka,6 I. E. Pavlovskaya,7 J. A. Piotrowski,8 A. Raukas9

The Scandinavian Ice Sheet (SIS) was an important component of the global ice sheet system during the last glaciation, but the timing of its growth to or retreat from its maximum extent remains poorly known. We used 115 cosmogenic beryllium-10 ages and 70 radiocarbon ages to constrain the timing of three substantial ice-margin fluctuations of the SIS between 25,000 and 12,000 years before the present. The age of initial deglaciation indicates that the SIS may have contributed to an abrupt rise in global sea level. Subsequent ice-margin fluctuations identify opposite mass-balance responses to North Atlantic climate change, indicating differing ice-sheet sensitivities to mean climate state.

1 Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
2 Centre de Spectrométrie Nucléaire et de Spectrométrie de Masse, 91405 Orsay, France.
3 Geological Survey of Lithuania, LT-03123 Vilnius, Lithuania.
4 Polish Geological Institute, 00-975 Warsaw, Poland.
5 Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of Latvia, Riga, LV-1586, Latvia.
6 Institute of Geosciences, University of Oulu, Post Office Box 3000, Linnanmaa 90014, Finland.
7 National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Institute of Geological Sciences, 220141 Minsk, Belarus.
8 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
9 Institute of Geology, Tallinn University of Technology, 10143 Tallinn, Estonia.

* Present address: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: vincent{at}ldeo.columbia.edu

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