Limits on the areal extent of the Barents Sea ice sheet in Late Weichselian time

Observations of Lateglacial and Holocene sea levels from the Barents Sea region provide constraints on the grounded ice sheet during Late Weichselian time. Ice sheets that were restricted primarily to the Svalbard islands and the immediate shallow sea floor are inadequate to explain the observed age-height relations across the region. Instead, the ice sheet extended out to the edge of the shelf and attained a maximum thickness of the order of 3000 m over the central region of the Barents Sea. Ice volumes to the east of Novaya Zemlya have been small compared to the ice over the Barents Sea. The raised shoreline information from western Spitsbergen implies that retreat of ice over this area was initially slow until about 13,000 yr B.P. following which the remaining deglaciation appears to have been rapid.