Subtropical iceberg scours: Tracking the path of meltwater in the deglacial North Atlantic

Abstract:

Over 700 individual iceberg scours have been identified in seafloor bathymetry spanning the southern U.S. Atlantic margin, from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to the Florida Keys, in water depths from 170-380m. These iceberg scours represent the plowing path of iceberg keels transported southward along the margin in a cold, coastal boundary current derived from the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Despite limited regional multibeam bathymetry data, the scours are traceable along the seafloor for >30 km and exhibit characteristic morphology of iceberg keel marks documented along glaciated continental margins. Many of the scours are flanked by lateral berms that are several meters high and often terminate in semi-circular pits ringed by several meter high ridges (i.e. grounding pits or iceberg plow ridges). The scours decrease in size and abundance moving southward, in accordance with increased iceberg melting farther from the ice calving margin. For example, the scours offshore of South Carolina (~32.5°N) are ~10–100m wide and incised 10–20m into the sediment, whereas scours off the Florida margin (31°N– 24.5°N) are narrower (10–50m wide) and incised 2–5m into the sea floor. Icebergs at these subtropical latitudes would likely have been comparable in size (up 300 m thick) to those calving from the modern-day Greenland Ice Sheet margin. Results from numerical simulations using MITgcm, a high-resolution, eddy-permitting, coupled ice-ocean model configured for the LGM suggest that cold, freshwater and small (≤90m thick) icebergs could have seasonally drifted to South Carolina, but iceberg transport to southern Florida requires much larger (5Sv) meltwater floods to overcome the northward flowing Gulf Stream. These meltwater flood events would most likely have been short-lived (<1 yr), but may have diverted a significant volume of freshwater away from the subpolar regions into the subtropical North Atlantic.