Researchers used advanced seismic technology to uncover 1-million-year-old glacial and ocean current landforms beneath the North Sea, providing new insights into past climate and ice sheet behavior.
A team of international researchers, including a glaciologist from Newcastle University in the UK, has uncovered exceptionally well-preserved glacial landforms buried nearly 1 kilometer beneath the North Sea.
Using seismic data—sound wave technology—they identified these Ice Age features hidden beneath thick layers of mud. Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, indicate that these landforms were created approximately 1 million years ago when an ice sheet originating in Norway extended toward the British Isles.
This discovery is particularly significant because it aligns with a period of global cooling known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, shedding new light on Earth’s climatic history.
Glacial landforms reveal how past ice sheets responded to changes in climate, which can help to make better predictions about how today’s ice sheets will respond to climate warming. A challenge is that glacial landforms are often buried beneath thick layers of sediment, preventing their identification.
Dr Christine Batchelor, Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography, Newcastle University, played a key role in the research by helping to map and interpret the landforms. “To fully understand the linkages between ice sheets and climate, we need to study how past ice sheets responded to long-term changes in climate,” said Dr Batchelor. “Using modern seismic data, our results suggest that ice sheets in northwest Europe expanded significantly in response to climate cooling about 1 million years ago.”
Advances in Seismic Data Usage
Dr Dag Ottesen from the Geological Survey of Norway, the paper’s lead author, said: “This study was made possible by the availability of 3D seismic data from the North Sea, which allowed us to examine the buried landforms in striking detail.”
3D seismic technology was developed to assess sediment suitability to host oil and gas or renewable infrastructures. However, this same data can be used to study buried landforms produced by glacial processes.
The mapped landscape includes streamlined features that were carved beneath the former ice sheet and ridges that record the imprint of the ice sheet as it started to retreat. Despite their ancient age, the landforms have a striking resemblance to similar features produced by ice sheets much more recently.
The buried landforms provide new knowledge about the mechanisms by which ice sheets retreat. In order for such subdued landforms to remain unmodified, the former ice sheet must have retreated rapidly by lift-off and floatation of its frontal margin.
In addition to glacial landforms, the researchers also found elongated furrows incised into the former seabed, which they interpreted to have been produced by strong ocean currents. These landforms are even more deeply buried than the glacial landforms, showing that they were produced prior to the advance of the ice sheet.
Implications for North Sea History
“With our high-resolution data, we can see that the shape and size of the furrows is consistent with an origin as ocean current furrows,” said Dr Ottesen. “This differs from previous interpretations of these features as glacial landforms, re-writing our understanding of North Sea glacial history.”
By providing a new level of detail about the buried landforms, the findings shed light on the evolution of the North Sea in our recent geological past. The study shows that the North Sea was characterized by strong ocean currents prior to about 1 million years ago, after which it became more directly influenced by ice sheets.
The research team acknowledges that a limitation of the study is a lack of data about the precise age of the landforms.
“A wealth of seismic data are now available for the North Sea,” said Dr. Batchelor. “The next step is to acquire long sediment cores that can allow researchers to better understand the timing of glacial events.”
Reference: “3D seismic evidence for a single Early Pleistocene glaciation of the central North Sea” by Dag Ottesen, Christine L. Batchelor, Helge Løseth and Harald Brunstad, 13 December 2024, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq6089
Other co-authors are Helge Løseth at Equinor ASA, Trondheim and Harald Brunstad at Aker BP ASA, Trondheim.
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4 Comments
“Glacial landforms reveal how past ice sheets responded to changes in climate, which can help to make better predictions about how today’s ice sheets will respond to climate warming.”
I think they need to expand on how information on ice sheet advances from cooling 1 million years ago will improve predictions about how current warming will impact today’s ice sheets. The processes are not temporally symmetrical. As is so often the case, this comes across as an obligatory reference to warming in order to get published.
Indeed; and the assumption is that the ice-sheet advanced, presumably akin to a bulldozer. One could imagine imagine a cooling episode allowing widespread snowfalls and no melting, hence as time passes the snow-pack turns to ice that just sits there and eventually becomes part of an ice-cap, thus preserving any earlier underlying geological features So the Norwegian ice-cap advances, but doesn’t move forward.
I can’t think of anything to say now ,later on I might have some
You mean climate change has been going on for millions of years. Someone call that grifter gore.