Early in the XIX century, the founders of glacial theory conceived of a "polar ice cap'' centered on the North Pole and extending as far south as central Europe. However later this model was discarded. The deep Arctic Ocean, discovered in 1890s, was thought inconsistent with the model. Moreover, a belief took hold that the Arctic was not more severely glacierized than now, as polar snowfall seemed insufficient to nourish much bigger ice masses. So the reigning concept of the XX century suggested that the past great ice sheets of Northern Hemisphere had mostly located on the mid-latitude continents. This concept was first challenged in 1970s, when Hughes et al. 1977 put forth the model of an Arctic Ice Sheet AIS that had formed largely in the Arctic Ocean. A core ice-shelf mechanism of Arctic Ice Sheet formation was proposed, which suggested: first, an inception of ice shelves in confined cold-water seas; second, turning the ice shelves into marine ice domes grounded on the polar continental shelves; and third, amalgamation of the Arctic terrestrial, marine-based, and floating ice components into a single Antarctic-style dynamic system. Now, a marine ice transgression hypothesis is proposed which suggests that the Arctic marine ice domes and thick floating ice shelf would push outwards and transgress onto adjacent lands. The Arctic Ice Sheet was an unstable, threshold-like system, prone to generate nonlinear responses to gradual change in forcing. The responses materialized in glacial surges, Heinrich events, and megafloods. As a result of the Earth's rotation, the system developed a west-to-east asymmetry.
Quaternary, ice and flood spreading, glacial theory, Arctic Ocean.
1. Antevs, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., v. 40, 1929.
2. Atlas..., Atlas of the energy balance of the oceans, 52 maps, 1970.
3. Baker, Late Glacial and Postglacial Environmental Changes I. P. Martini, Ed., 1997.
4. Barash, Quaternary paleoceanography of the Atlantic Ocean, 1988.
5. Belderson, Palaeogeogr., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol., v. 13, 1973., doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0031-01827390020-5
6. Bernhardi, Jahrbuch Mineralogie, Geognosie, Petrefaktenkunde, v. 3, 1832.
7. Bintanja, Quatern. Internat., v. 95/96 C, 2002.
8. Brigham-Grette, Quatern. Science Reviews, v. 20, no. 1-3, 2001., doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-37910000107-4
9. Broccoli, J. Climate, v. 13, no. 5, 2000., doi:https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-04422000013lt;0951:TCATLGgt;2.0.CO;2
10. Budd, Annals Glaciol., v. 27, 1998.
11. Charlesworth, The Quaternary era with special reference to its glaciation, Vol. 2, 1957.
12. CLIMAP Project members, CLIMAP Project members, Seasonal reconsructions of the Earth's surface at the last glacial maximum, 1981.
13. Conolly, Geol. Soc. Amer. Memoirs, v. 126, 1970.
14. Crary, Arctic, v. 13, 1960.
15. Denton, The last great ice sheets, 1981.
16. Dyke, Quatern. Science Reviews, v. 21, 2002., doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-37910100095-6
17. Flint, Glacial and Quaternary geology, 1971.
18. Gerasimov, Quaternary Geology, 1939.
19. Grosswald, Quatern. Res., v. 13, 1980., doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0033-58948090080-0
20. Grosswald, Ice sheets of the continental shelves, 1983.
21. Grosswald, Materials of Glaciol, Studies, v. 63, 1988.
22. Grosswald, Doklady Akad. Nauk SSSR, v. 302, no. 3, 1988.
23. Grosswald, Pleistotsen Sibiri, Stratigrafiya I mezhregionfl'nye korrelyatsii N. A. Skabichevskaya, Ed., 1989.
24. Grosswald, Doklady Akad. Nauk, v. 350, no. 4, 1996.
25. Grosswald, Quatern. Internat., v. 45/46, 1998.
26. Grosswald, Cataclysmic megafloods in Eurasia and the Polar ice sheets, 1999.
27. Grosswald, Russian J. Earth Sciences, v. 3, no. 6, 2001.
28. Grosswald, Izvestiya Akad. Nauk, Seriya Geogr., no. 6, 2001.
29. Grosswald, Vergletscherungen in japanischen Gebirgen und ihr Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des Biwa-Sees Shoji Horie, Ed., 2002.
30. Grosswald, J. Glaciol., v. 41, no. 138, 1995.
31. Grosswald, Polar Geogr., v. 23, no. 1, 1999.
32. Grosswald, Quatern. Science Reviews, v. 21, 2002.
33. Grosswald, Materials of Glaciol. Studies, v. 85, 1998.
34. Grosswald, Geomorfologiya, no. 1, 1993.
35. Grosswald, Polar Record, v. 35, no. 194, 1999.
36. Grosswald, Geogr. Annaler, v. 74A, no. 4, 1992., doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/521428
37. Huybrechts, Annals Glaciol., v. 25, 1997.
38. Hughes, Nature, v. 266, 1977., doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/266596a0
39. Hughes, Geograf. Annaler, v. 69A, no. 2, 1986.
40. Hughes, Ice sheets, 1998.
41. Ives, Naturwissenschaften, v. 62, 1975., doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00623272
42. Johnsen, Tellus, v. 47B, no. 5, 1995.
43. Kazakova, Problems of geomorphology and Paleogeography of Asia, 1955.
44. Kotilainen, Nature, v. 377, no. 6547, 1995., doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/377323a0
45. Kozarski, Zeitschr. f#xFC;r Geomorphol., N.F., v. 7, no. 1, 1963.
46. Lee, Quaternary glaciations in the Lushan area, central China, 1947.
47. Leffingwell, The Canning River region, Northern Alaska, 1919.
48. Leg 145 Scientific Party, Eos, Transactions, Amer. Geophys. Union, v. 74, no. 36, 1993.
49. Lindstrom, Paleoceanography, v. 1, no. 3, 1986.
50. Lowe, Reconstructing Quaternary Environments, 2nd edition, 1997.
51. McCarthy, Arctic, v. 11, no. 2, 1958.
52. McLaren, 1972.
53. Okada, Initial Reports of the Deep Sea Drilling Project, Vols 56, 57, 1980.
54. Oldale, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull., v. 95, no. 1, 1884.
55. Polyak, Nature, v. 410, no. 6827, 2001., doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/35068536
56. Polyak, Eos, Transactions, Amer. Geophys. Union, v. 83, 2002.
57. Prik, The Soviet Arctic. Seas and islands of the Arctic Ocean Y. Y. Gakkel, and L. S. Govorukha, Eds., 1970.
58. Romanovski, Izvestiya Akad. Nauk, Seriya Geogr., no. 3, 2001.
59. Schenk, Nature, v. 410, 2001., doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/35065027
60. Sher, Quatern. Internat., v. 28, 1995.
61. Spielhagen, Nature, v. 410, 2001., doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/35068665
62. Svendsen, Boreas, v. 28, no. 1, 1999., doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/030094899421281
63. Vinogradova, Proc. Polar Res. Inst., v. 2, 1959.
64. Weertman, J. Glaciol., v. 13, no. 67, 1976.
