Late Quaternary detrital carbonate (DC-) layers in Baffin Bay marine sediments (67 degrees-74 degrees N): Correlation with Heinrich events in the North Atlantic?

Episodes of glaciation in the region north of Baffin Bay resulted in the er osion of Paleozoic carbonate outcrops in NW Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic. These events are recognized in the marine sediments of Baffin Bay (BB) as a series of detrital carbonate-rich (DC-) layers. BBDC-layers thin southward within Baffin Bay; thus, the contribution of Baffin Bay ice-rafte d carbonate-rich sediments to the North Atlantic is probably slight, especi ally compared with sediment output from Hudson Strait during Heinrich event s. We reexamine (cf. Aksy 1981) a series of nine piston cores from the axis of Baffin Bay and across the Davis Strait sill and provide a suite of 21 A MS C-14 dates on foramininfera which bracket the ages of several DC-layers. The onset of the last DC event is dated in six cores and has an age of ca. 12.4 ka. In northern and central Baffin Bay a thick DC-layer occurs at aro und 4m in the cores and is dated > 40 ka. There were three to six DC interv ening events. The youngest BBDC event (possibly a double event) lags Heinri ch event 1 (H-l) off Hudson Strait, dated at 14.5 ka, but it is coeval with the pronounced warming seen in GISP2 records from the Greenland Ice Sheet during interstadial #1. We hypothesize that BBDC episodes are coeval with m ajor interstadial delta(18)O peaks from GISP2 and other Greenland ice core records and are caused by or associated with the advection of Atlantic Wate r into Baffin Bay (cf. Hiscott et al., 1989) and the subsequent rapid retre at of ice streams in the northern approaches to Baffin Bay. (C) 1998 Elsevi er Science Ltd. All rights reserved.