Peregrinations of the Greenland Ice Sheet divide in the last glacial cycle: implications for central Greenland ice cores

摘要

The superb quality of the climate chronology archived in the Summit, Greenland ice cores (GRIP, GISP2) testifies that the Greenland Ice Sheet divide has been generally stable through the last glacial cycle. The ice sheet has experienced a broad range of paleoclimate conditions, ice sheet margin configurations, and internal dynamical adjustments in glacial-interglacial transitions, however. It is unlikely that the Summit region escaped shifts in ice divide position, geometry, elevation, and flow characteristics. Details of this dynamical history are important to several aspects of ice core studies. The magnitudes of purer and simple shearing, reconstruction of vertical ice velocity, the explicit location of the ice divide, and the divide 'residence time' at different locations are all of interest in interpretation of climatic variables and physical properties of ice in the ice cores. We apply a three-dimensional, thermomechanical ice sheet model to examine the evolution of these dynamical variables over the last 160 kyr in central Greenland. While a high-elevation ice dome is present in the Summit region throughout the simulation, ice divide migrations of up to 150 km are predicted. All points in the vicinity of the Summit ice cores, including the modern divide, have been subject to flowline shifts and variable, non-zero shear deformation during the adjustment from glacial to Holocene conditions, from ca. 10 ka to the present. Modelled divide peregrinations and strain rate history are consistent with the observed disturbance of deep ice in the GRIP and GISP2 ice cores, which has muddled paleoclimate reconstructions for the last interglacial (Eemian) period in Greenland. Dynamical excursions are also evident north of the modern summit, where the NGRIP ice core is currently being drilled [Dahl-Jensen et al., J. Glaciol. 43 (1997) 300-306]. However, the prevailing flow direction and deformation regime at the NGRIP site are much more stable than those at GRIP and GISP2 in the simulations. Combined with the greater depth of ice at this site, this lends cautious optimism to the hope that Eemian ice at NGRIP may contain an intact record of Eemian climate.