RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES VOL. 7, ES5004, doi:10.2205/2005ES000180, 2005

Introduction

[2]  The problem of past glaciations on the Northwest Pacific Rim remains controversial. As of today, despite our arguments, recently presented in a nutshell Letter to the Editor of Quarternary Research [Grosswald and Hughes, 2004], it is broadly believed that these glaciations were of minor extent, having been merely restricted to the high mountains of Northeast Siberia and Alaska. This view has been advocated by a majority of Russian geographers, from Voeikov of late XIX century to our contemporaries Velichko and Glushkova; who believed, and keep believing, that the climate of Pleistocene Siberia was too dry to support any great ice caps on lowlands [e.g., Biryukov et al., 1988; Velichko, 2002]. This view was shared by Mclntyre [1981], by many researchers of the region's Quaternary [Brigham-Grette et al., 2003; Elias et al., 1996; Glushkova, 2001], and by designers of a multitude of international research programs.

[3]  Challenging them, we presented our general case for ice-sheet glaciation of the Northwest Pacific Rim and Beringia [Grosswald, 1998a; Grosswald and Hughes, 1995, 2002; Grosswald and Vozovik, 1984; Hughes, 1998; Hughes and Hughes, 1994; Hughes et al., 1991]. In this paper, the discussion will be focused on a major constituent part of the region - the Sea of Okhotsk. We addressed the problem of an Okhotsk Ice Sheet previously in the IPPCCE Newsletter edited by Shoji Horie [Grosswald and Hughes, 1998], with a very restricted circulation. We now update our earlier arguments and seek greater exposure for them.


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Citation: Grosswald, M. G., and T. J. Hughes (2005), "Back-arc" marine ice sheet in the Sea of Okhotsk, Russ. J. Earth Sci., 7, ES5004, doi:10.2205/2005ES000180.

Copyright 2005 by the Russian Journal of Earth Sciences

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