Deglacial varve chronology for Skåne-Småland, Sweden

Rachael S. Avery, Sarah L. Greenwood, Frederik Schenk, Björn M. Morén, David I. Armstrong McKay, Lars Brunnberg, Barbara Wohlfarth

Varve thickness data from legacy and newly-acquired annually-laminated sediment archives in varve years on the local Skåne-Småland timescale, along with the details of the sediment sites.

Here we have reanalysed legacy data and incorporated our own new terrestrial and offshore data to create a new chronology, the Skåne-Småland varve chronology. Using varve thickness data it is possible to estimate the regional retreat pattern and rate of the Fennoscandian ice sheet.

The data have been collected from southeastern Sweden (Skåne, Blekinge, Kalmarsund, Öland and Småland); legacy data were collected between 1906⁠ – ⁠1994, and new data were acquired both onshore and offshore between 2018⁠ – ⁠2019. The data represent a time period approximately 15 thousand years before present.

Citation

Rachael S. Avery, Sarah L. Greenwood, Frederik Schenk, Björn M. Morén, David I. Armstrong McKay, Lars Brunnberg, Barbara Wohlfarth (2020) Deglacial varve chronology for Skåne-Småland, Sweden. Dataset version 1. Bolin Centre Database. https://doi.org/10.17043/avery-2020-varve-1

References

Avery RS, Greenwood SL, Schenk F, Morén BM, Armstrong McKay DI, Brunnberg L, Barbara Wohlfarth (2020) A 725-year integrated marine-terrestrial varve chronology for southeastern Sweden suggests rapid ice retreat ~15 ka BP. Boreas (accepted)

Data description

Four varve thickness spreadsheets:

• south coast part of the new Skåne-Småland varve chronology
• east coast part of the chronology
• an additional floating chronology that has been speculatively matched to the varve thickness record from an existing chronology to the north
• individual thickness series for the offshore cores in the EL19-IGV02 suite from Kalmarsund.

These spreadsheets are available as plain .csv files and colour-coded .xslx files.

Two summary tables

• for the south chronology (Skåne-Blekinge)
• for the east coast chronology (Blekinge-Småland).

These tables include site details and bottom varve ages. These files are .csv.

Site-coordinates

• Two tables detailing the 2018⁠ – ⁠2019 onshore and offshore core acquisitions including site co-ordinates, in .csv and xlsx.

Comments

Lars Brunnberg contributed significantly to the production of this dataset in the early stages, finding and digitising old varve thickness diagrams in the Geochronological Museum at Stockholm University. His contribution is acknowledged posthumously.