Abstract

The Scandinavian Ice Sheet (SIS) reached its maximum extent over Fennoscandia and Northern Europe ~21–20 ka. At its maximum volume, the SIS hosted approximately 15 m sea level equivalent of water. When it retreated, this water was delivered to the oceans, and the SIS left a rich variety of glacial landforms which can be used to reconstruct the ice sheet and its evolution over time. Empirical reconstructions of past ice sheets based on observations of their landform records can be used to better understand ice sheet dynamics and their responses to climate changes. In this talk, I will present a new reconstruction of the flow pattern evolution of the SIS derived from extensive subglacial bedform mapping using new high-resolution (metre-scale) digital elevation models over Finland, Sweden, and Norway. I will present this in its context as a part of the ERC -funded PALGLAC project (PI Prof. C. Clark). PALGLAC is combining multiple observational ingredients to produce a new empirical reconstruction of the entire Scandinavian Ice Sheet, and combining this with data-model comparison approaches to improve numerical model representations of ice sheet dynamics and evolution. Such insights are important to improve our understanding of the potential responses of Earth’s contemporary ice sheets to anthropogenic climate change, and thus their likely future contributions to global sea level rise.