Sites M0001–M0004

Exploring the long-term Cenozoic Arctic Ocean climate history: a challenge within the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)

“…Continuous central Arctic Ocean sedimentary records, allowing a development of chronologic sequences of climate and environmental change through Cenozoic times and a comparison with global climate records (Fig. 2), were attempted to be acquired by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 302, the so-called Arctic Ocean Coring Expedition-ACEX [13,88].…”

“…[140] and the section recovered during the ACEX drilling expedition [8,13]. The middle Eocene sediments recovered at Core FL-422 are arbitrarily placed at 45 Ma, the three late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian/Campanian) cores are arbitrarily placed on the time axis as well.…”

“…crest of Lomonosov Ridge between 87 and 88°N ( Fig. 4; [8,[11][12][13]88]). The Lomonosov Ridge, a 1800-km-long continental fragment broken off of the Eurasian continental margin near 56 Ma and separated by sea-floor spreading during the Cenozoic [60,64,65,74], was identified as target area as the elevation of the ridge, *3 km above the surrounding abyssal plains, indicates that sediments on top of the ridge have been isolated from turbidites and are likely of purely pelagic origin (mainly biogenic, eolian, and/or ice-rafted).…”

“…Main objectives of the ACEX drilling campaign focused on the reconstruction of Cenozoic Arctic ice, temperatures, and climates. Some of the key questions to be answered from ACEX were framed around the evolution of sea ice and ice sheets, the past physical oceanographic structure, Arctic gateways, links between Arctic land and ocean climate, and major changes in depositional environments [8,12,13]. To date, the ACEX sites remain the only scientific deep sea drilling location in the central Arctic Ocean (Fig.…”

“…Backman et al [13] 2005 Transarctic (HOTRAX) Healy/Oden (USA/Sweden) Darby et al [27] 2007 Eur. Cont.…”