Paleomagnetic Synchronization: A transect of sedimentological archives from N-Svalbard towards Arctic-Norway

Continental ice sheets and sea level in the Svalbard - Barents Sea - Arctic-Norway region were near their modern configurations at least by 8000 years ago, and the pre-industrial climate system was essentially established, including its feedbacks. The maj or difference was the large summer insolation anomaly in the Arctic driven by orbital cycles. The maximum Holocene warmth is the most recent interval during which summer sea ice was demonstrably less extensive over the Arctic Ocean than during the recent minimum in 2007 AD. The Holocene therefore affords an opportunity to investigate a period of warmth similar to what is expected during the coming century, even though the forcing is quite different. Accurate dating of the climate proxy archives is fundame ntal in order to reconstruct natural variability in the past and may in fact be the ultimate limiting factor when attempting to reconstruct "rates of change" in the distant past. Radiocarbon dating is widely utilized to achieve these goals; however high-l atitude lake sediments have turned out difficult to date. Comparisons between radiocarbon dates and varves or known tephra layers has shown that the difference between them can be in the order of several hundred years. The significant uncertainties in bot h lacustrine (old carbon in flux) and marine (delta R) environments thus confound attempted comparisons. This proposal is designed to provide secure PSV synchronization on sediment archives from range of environmental settings that were chosen to reflect the north-to-south atmospheric and oceanographic variability on a transect from north-to-south Svalbard, across the Barents Sea, toward the Arctic Norway - a key localities in the Northern Hemisphere. The synchronization of sediment cores based on PSV of fers an opportunity to evaluate the variability of the Arctic system and the feedbacks that lead to rapid and pronounced changes, such as those currently taking place.