Modelling Late Cenozoic isostatic elevation changes in the Barents Sea and their implications for oceanic and climatic regimes:: preliminary results

Late Cenozoic isostatic changes in the elevation of the Barents Sea are simulated using a numerical model. Isopach maps of the deposits off present-day Bear Island and Storfjorden troughs made earlier are used to calculate the thickness of sediment cover removed from the respective drainages basins at various time intervals during the last 2.3 Ma. Results indicate that Barents Sea was subaerially exposed at 2.3 Ma and major parts of it became submarine after I Ma. Barents Sea today receives around 40% of the warm and saline North Atlantic waters flowing into the Scotland-Greenland Ridge and about half of the Atlantic water entering the Arctic Ocean. It thus has an important role to play in the present-day ocean circulation pattern in the Polar North Atlantic region and water-mass transformations that take place in the Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The effects of an uplifted Barents Sea on the oceanic regime and the Arctic sea-ice cover under the present-day forcings fields are studied using the Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model. Preliminary results indicate that a subaerial Barents Sea causes an increased input of warm Atlantic waters into the Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait which results in warming of the Atlantic water masses in the Arctic Ocean, followed by a reduction in the sea-ice cover. The obtained findings can be used to explain the apparent discrepancy in the late Cenozoic record of the sub-Arctic and Arctic regions whereby Fennoscandia, Iceland and Greenland are envisaged to have been covered by major ice sheets during late Pliocene whereas high Arctic areas such as Svalbard and NE Greenland were apparently free of any major ice. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.