Cenozoic biostratigraphic, cosmogenic isotope, magnetostratigraphic, and cyclostratigraphic data derived from Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 302, the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), are merged into a coherent age model. This age model has low resolution because of poor core recovery, limited availability of biostratigraphic information, and the complex nature of the magnetostratigraphic record. One 2.2 Ma long hiatus occurs in the late Miocene; another spans 26 Ma (18.2 - 44.4 Ma). The average sedimentation rate in the recovered Cenozoic sediments is about 15 m/Ma. Core-seismic correlation links the ACEX sediments to the reflection seismic stratigraphy of line AWI-91090, on which the ACEX sites were drilled. This seismostratigraphy can be correlated over wide geographic areas in the central Arctic Ocean, implying that the ACEX age model can be extended well beyond the drill sites.

Knowledge of the long-term history of the perennial ice is an important issue that has eluded study because the Cenozoic core material needed has been unavailable until the recent Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX). Detrital Fe oxide mineral grains analyzed by microprobe from the last 14 Ma (164 m) of the ACEX composite core on the Lomonosov Ridge were matched to circum-Arctic sources with the same mineral and 12-element composition. These precise source determinations and estimates of drift rates were used to determine that these sand grains could not be rafted to the ACEX core site in less than a year. Thus the perennial ice cover has existed since 14 Ma except for the unlikely rapid return to seasonal ice between the average sampling interval of about 0.17 Ma. Both North America and Russia contributed significant Fe grains to the ACEX core during the last 14 Ma.

The upper 200 m of the sediments recovered during IODP Leg 302, the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), to the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean consist almost exclusively of detrital material. The scarcity of biostratigraphic markers severely complicates the establishment of a reliable chronostratigraphic framework for these sediments, which contain the first continuous record of the Neogene environmental and climatic evolution of the Arctic region. Here we present profiles of cosmogenic (10)Be together with the seawater-derived fraction of stable (9)Be obtained from the ACEX cores. The down-core decrease of (10)Be/(9)Be provides an average sedimentation rate of 14.5 +/- 1 m/Ma for the uppermost 151 m of the ACEX record and allows the establishment of a chronostratigraphy for the past 12.3 Ma. The age-corrected (10)Be concentrations and (10)Be/(9)Be ratios suggest the existence of an essentially continuous sea ice cover over the past 12.3 Ma.

The submarine Lomonosov Ridge, which bisects the Arctic Ocean, is covered by similar to450 m of hemipelagic sediments. High-resolution chirp sonar and side-scan data have documented erosion of a section of the ridge. Here we present multichannel seismic and chirp sonar data which show removal of unconsolidated sediments along the Eurasia Basin side of the Lomonosov Ridge, where the central ridge is shallower than 1000 m. The incomplete erosion of the hemipelagic drape and probable topographic control of ice motion suggest that the deepest draft glacier ice, which reached the central Arctic Ocean from the Eurasia Basin, was in the form of armadas of large icebergs embedded in sea ice rather than a single, continuous floating ice shelf. Massive, rapid discharge of glacier ice was probably required to produce the deepest draft (>800 m) icebergs. Eastward and northward drift trajectories from a likely iceberg source area on the Kara-Barents Sea margin would reflect the relative strength of Atlantic inflow through the Fram Strait. However, only icebergs with drafts exceeding bathymetric thresholds on the Lomonosov Ridge would leave an erosive imprint on the seabed. Advection of Atlantic water may have been relatively strong at times of discharge from the Saalian ice sheet. Icebergs exiting the Arctic Ocean caused massive erosion and redeposition of the hemipelagic sediments on top of Yermak Plateau.

During the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), a 428-m-thick sequence of Upper Cretaceous to Quaternary sediments was penetrated. The mineralogical composition of the upper 300 m of this sequence is presented here for the first time. Heavy and clay mineral associations indicate a major and consistent shift in provenance, from the Barents-Kara-western Laptev Sea region, characterized by presence of common clinopyroxene, to the eastern Laptev-East Siberian seas in the upper part of the section, characterized by common hornblende (amphibole). Sea ice originating from the latter source region must have survived at least one summer melt cycle in order to reach the ACEX drill site, if considering modern sea ice trajectories and velocities. This shift in mineral assemblages probably represents the onset of a perennial sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, which occurred at about 13 Ma, thus suggesting a coeval freeze in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

Stratigraphic data from 63 Deep Sea Drilling Project and Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) sites that sample the lower Neogene and Paleogene sediments of the tropical Pacific have been compiled and put on the biostratigraphic and paleomagnetic timescale refined by ODP Leg 199 scientists. Sediment accumulation rates have been calculated for ten intervals ranging in age from 10 to 56 Ma and have been plotted for the midpoint of each interval at the associated paleoposition for each site used. A fixed hot spot model was used for reconstruction of the Pacific lithospheric plate. All such reconstructed intervals show the development of a tongue of high accumulation rates associated with the oceanographic divergence at the geographic equator. The development of this equatorial band is weakest between 46 and 56 Ma, the time of the peak warmth in Paleogene climate. Possible motion of the Hawaiian hot spot or true polar wander between 46 and 56 Ma appears to have had little effect on the plate rotation estimate of the position of the equator. In addition to temporal changes in the calcite compensation depth and in productivity, the biggest change in the patterns of sediment accumulation rates in the eastern tropical Pacific was the development of a relatively strong divergence between 6degrees and 10degreesN, near the region of divergence between the modern North Equatorial Current and the North Equatorial Counter Current. Changes in the equatorial circulation appear to be associated in time with the opening and closing of oceanic gateways, particularly the complex closing of the Caribbean-Pacific gateway.

We present a record encompassing marine isotope stages 7-1 from a hitherto unexplored and heavily ice-covered area of the Arctic Ocean, the Lomonosov Ridge off the northern Greenland-Canada continental margin, using nannofossil and benthic foraminifera stratigraphy. Planktic foraminifera assemblages are used as a key paleoceanographic proxy, and a surprisingly large variability is found for an interior Arctic Ocean site. Abundant small (63-125 mu m) subpolar Turborotalita quinqueloba occur in two sections, possibly representing substages 5e (last interglacial) and 5a (warm interstadial). However, the present-day circulation pattern and the very distant location of high productive regions cannot explain such high abundances of subpolar specimens in the interior, perennially sea ice-covered Arctic Ocean. Hence our proxy record indicates that last interglacial sea ice concentrations were reduced off some areas of northern Greenland-Canada. Whether this was part of a larger regional pattern or it represents the influence of polynya areas with locally increased productivity remains to be solved. With respect to glacial conditions, increased ice-rafted debris (IRD) deposition in the area appears to be associated with glacial stages 6, 4, and late 3. Stage 2 sediments (including the Last Glacial Maximum) are condensed with a sparse IRD content only.

[1] Despite its importance in the global climate system, age-calibrated marine geologic records reflecting the evolution of glacial cycles through the Pleistocene are largely absent from the central Arctic Ocean. This is especially true for sediments older than 200 ka. Three sites cored during the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Expedition 302, the Arctic Coring Expedition ( ACEX), provide a 27 m continuous sedimentary section from the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean. Two key biostratigraphic datums and constraints from the magnetic inclination data are used to anchor the chronology of these sediments back to the base of the Cobb Mountain subchron ( 1215 ka). Beyond 1215 ka, two best fitting geomagnetic models are used to investigate the nature of cyclostratigraphic change. Within this chronology we show that bulk and mineral magnetic properties of the sediments vary on predicted Milankovitch frequencies. These cyclic variations record “glacial” and “interglacial” modes of sediment deposition on the Lomonosov Ridge as evident in studies of ice-rafted debris and stable isotopic and faunal assemblages for the last two glacial cycles and were used to tune the age model. Potential errors, which largely arise from uncertainties in the nature of downhole paleomagnetic variability, and the choice of a tuning target are handled by defining an error envelope that is based on the best fitting cyclostratigraphic and geomagnetic solutions.

Drilling results from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) to the Lomonosov Ridge (LR) document a 26 million year hiatus that separates freshwater-influenced biosilica-rich deposits of the middle Eocene from fossil-poor glaciomarine silty clays of the early Miocene. Detailed micropaleontological and sedimentological data from sediments surrounding this mid-Cenozoic hiatus describe a shallow water setting for the LR, a finding that conflicts with predrilling seismic predictions and an initial postcruise assessment of its subsidence history that assumed smooth thermally controlled subsidence following rifting. A review of Cenozoic tectonic processes affecting the geodynamic evolution of the central Arctic Ocean highlights a prolonged phase of basin-wide compression that ended in the early Miocene. The coincidence in timing between the end of compression and the start of rapid early Miocene subsidence provides a compelling link between these observations and similarly accounts for the shallow water setting that persisted more than 30 million years after rifting ended. However, for much of the late Paleogene and early Neogene, tectonic reconstructions of the Arctic Ocean describe a landlocked basin, adding additional uncertainty to reconstructions of paleodepth estimates as the magnitude of regional sea level variations remains unknown.

A model study of an idealized early Miocene Arctic Ocean has been undertaken. The work is motivated by the first drill core retrieved from the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean, which suggests a transition from anoxic to oxic condition during the early Miocene, a feature presumably related to the opening of the Fram Strait. Here, the ventilation in a semienclosed basin, connected with the ocean through a strait with a sill, is examined using an ocean circulation model that includes a passive age tracer. In particular, we investigate how the ventilation depends on strait geometry, freshwater influx, and surface wind stress. We find that the turnover time, characterizing the bulk ventilation rate, is primarily controlled by the strait width and the wind stress. Generally, the oldest water in the basin is encountered near the sill depth, but wind forcing displaces the oldest water downward. For narrow straits, the turnover time gives an upper bound on the mean age of the basin water. The results have implications when translating local oxygen conditions, recorded in the sediment sequence from the Lomonosov Ridge, to basin-scale circulation patterns. Further, the results indicate that the early Miocene Arctic Ocean became well ventilated when the Fram Strait reached a width of about 100 km.

A model study of an idealized early Miocene Arctic Ocean has been undertaken. The work is motivated by the first drill core retrieved from the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean, which suggests a transition from anoxic to oxic condition during the early Miocene, a feature presumably related to the opening of the Fram Strait. Here, the ventilation in a semienclosed basin, connected with the ocean through a strait with a sill, is examined using an ocean circulation model that includes a passive age tracer. In particular, we investigate how the ventilation depends on strait geometry, freshwater influx, and surface wind stress. We find that the turnover time, characterizing the bulk ventilation rate, is primarily controlled by the strait width and the wind stress. Generally, the oldest water in the basin is encountered near the sill depth, but wind forcing displaces the oldest water downward. For narrow straits, the turnover time gives an upper bound on the mean age of the basin water. The results have implications when translating local oxygen conditions, recorded in the sediment sequence from the Lomonosov Ridge, to basin-scale circulation patterns. Further, the results indicate that the early Miocene Arctic Ocean became well ventilated when the Fram Strait reached a width of about 100 km.