Washington, DC -- Sediment cores retrieved from the Arctic’s deep-sea floor by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) have provided long-absent data to scientists who report new findings in the June 21 issue of Nature. A team of ACEX researchers report that the Arctic Ocean changed from a landlocked body of water (a ‘lake stage’) through a poorly oxygenated ‘estuarine sea’ phase to a fully oxygenated ocean at 17.5 million years ago during the latter part of the early Miocene era. The authors attribute the change in Arctic conditions to the evolution of the Fram Strait into a wider, deeper passageway that allowed an inflow of saline North Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean. Scientists believe that the deep-water connection between the northern Atlantic and Arctic Oceans is a key driver of global ocean circulation patterns and global climate change.
In 2004, the offshore ACEX research team cored a 428-meter thick sediment sequence from the crest of the Lomonosov ridge in the central Arctic Ocean, near the North Pole. These sediments provide the first geological validation of the Cenezoic paleoenvironmental history of the Arctic Ocean. Current evidence of the onset of the ventilated circulation system is preserved in the chemical and physical properties and the micropaleontology of the recovered seafloor sediments.
Co-chief scientist Jan Backman, Stockholm University, comments on the significance of the new findings, saying, “If we can learn what has happened in the geological past, we can begin to use that knowledge to look into the future. Scientists engaged in climate change studies are advancing an important area of knowledge about the planet we live on.”
The authors of the newly released study include Martin Jakobsson (Stockholm University), Jan Backman (Stockholm University), Bert Rudels (Finnish Institute of Marine Research), Jonas Nycander (Stockholm University), Martin Frank (Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, IFM-GEOMAR), Larry Mayer (University of New Hampshire), Wilfried Jokat (Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research), Francesca Sangiorgi (Utrecht University), Matther O’Regan (University of Rhode Island), Henk Brinkhuis (Utrecht Univesity), John King (University of Rhode Island) and Kathryn Moran (University of Rhode Island).
ACEX was an operation of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an international marine research program primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The Arctic Coring Expedition was led by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD), an IODP contributing member that represents 17 nations. ECORD is responsible for managing all IODP mission-specific operations, those scientific expeditions conducted in unusual or demanding environments in which specific platform requirements must be used to meet specific science objectives. In all, 21 countries participate in IODP. For more information about ACEX, go to http://www.eso.ecord.org/expeditions/302/302.htm. For IODP program information, including the current drilling expedition schedule, go to www.iodp.org.
Contacts:
Alan Stevenson, ECORD Science Operator (ESO)
agst@bgs.ag.uk
Albert Gerdes, ESO
agerdes@marum.de
Nancy Light, IODP Management International
nlight@iodp.org
Jon Corsiglia, IODP U.S. Science Operator
jcorsiglia@joiscience.org
Cheryl Dybas, U.S. National Science Foundation cdybas@nsf.gov
Journal
Nature