NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Greenland Ice Sheet Maximum Early Holocene Recession Data

Establishing the timing of maximum Holocene warmth in the Arctic is critical for understanding global climate system response to external forcing. In Greenland, challenges in obtaining climate records that span the full Holocene have hampered efforts to robustly identify when the Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred. Reconstructing land-based ice sheet history can fill this gap because these ice sheet regions respond sensitively to summer temperature. We synthesize new and published 10Be and 14C ages from southwest Greenland to map Greenland ice sheet margin positions from 12 to 7 ka and calculate retreat rates from 12 to 0 ka. We found that maximum Greenland ice sheet recession occurred between ~10.4 and 9.1 ka. Our reconstruction suggests that summer air temperatures in southwest Greenland were highest from ~10.4 to 9.1 ka, providing support for an early regional Holocene Thermal Maximum. These results can serve as benchmarks for comparison with ice sheet and climate model simulations.