Greenland Ice Sheet responses to past warm climate intervals: Provenance insights from North-East Baffin Bay

The ChronIce project (Chronicling Greenland Ice Sheet evolution through past warm climates), investigates the dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet to past warm climate intervals by reconstructing changes in physical weathering and past ice sheet configurations back to ~15 Ma. Constraining the response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to past warm climate intervals is essential for improving our understanding of its sensitivity to future warming and its contribution to global sea-level rise.
Focusing on sedimentary archives from North-East Baffin Bay, we analyzed marine cores recovered during International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 400 (Sites U1604, U1606, U1607 and U1608). Temporal variations in glacial provenance, weathering intensity, and ice sheet configurations are assessed using detrital mineral composition and multi mineral geochronology approaches. Heavy mineral fractions are characterized using Automated Quantitative Mineralogy–Scanning Electron Microscopy (AQM-SEM) and Laser Ablation–Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), enabling single-grain U–Pb geochronology and robust provenance fingerprinting of ice-rafted debris (IRD). We present new data from zircon, apatite and titanite grains. Preliminary zircon, titanite and apatite ages (max.~3200 Ma) from the Upper Pleistocene (130.000 – 12.000 years ago) pointing to a Greenlandic source area possible Southern-West Greenland or the Ilulissat area.