The Arctic is responding more rapidly to global warming than most other areas on our planet. Northward-flowing Atlantic Water is the major means of heat advection toward the Arctic and strongly affects the sea ice distribution. Records of its natural variability are critical for the understanding of feedback mechanisms and the future of the Arctic climate system, but continuous historical records reach back only ~150 years. Here, we present a multidecadal-scale record of ocean temperature variations during the past 2000 years, derived from marine sediments off Western Svalbard (79°N). We find that early-21st-century temperatures of Atlantic Water entering the Arctic Ocean are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming.

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Calcareous foraminifers and hydrographic parameters in 113 bottom samples from the southern Kara Sea were examined to improve the usage of foraminifers as paleoenvironmental proxies for river-dominated high-latitude continental shelves. Foraminiferal taxa form a succession from near-estuarine to distal open-sea locations, characterized by a gradual increase in salinities. Foraminiferal assemblages are discriminated into three groups: riverproximal,-intermediate, and-distal. This succession appears to be controlled by a combination of feeding conditions and bottom salinities, and are related to riverine fluxes of freshwater, organic matter, and sediments. Morphological and behavioral adaptations of foraminifers to specific environments are discussed.

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Records of iceberg-rafting and palaeohydrography from two East Greenland shelf cores (JM96-1206/1-GC and JM96-1207/1-GC) are reported. Benthic foraminifera, stable isotopes and IRD uxes indicate a shift toward colder, lower-salinity 'polar' conditions c. 5 cal. ka. A new proxy of iceberg-rafting on the East Greenland Shelf is the ux of calcium carbonate (TIC) thought to be derived from glacial erosion of Cretaceous calcareous mudstones. A change in the regularity and spacing of carbonate ux peaks at c. 4.7 cal. ka in JM96-1207 coincides with the onset of Neoglacial cooling in the Renland ice core d 18 O record. We propose that the carbonate ux peaks between 4.7 and 0.4 cal. ka are related to sea-surface coolings associated with increased ux of polar water and sea ice in the East Greenland Current. These peaks are synchronous with sea-surface coolings interpreted from North Atlantic deep-sea cores, but additional peaks centred around 2.4 and 3.8 cal. ka in JM96-1207 suggest that the shelf site captures higher-frequency events. The data indicate that severe Arctic sea-ice events began in the Neoglacial interval, and that earlier-Holocene cool events in deep-sea records are associated with other processes, such as release of meltwater from residual glacier ice and glacial lakes.

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