Abstract

Submarine landslides can be far larger than even the largest terrestrial landslide. For instance, the Storegga Slide that occurred 8,200 years ago offshore Norway contained over 3,000 cubic kilometers of material, and is bigger than Scotland. It generated a major tsunami that inundated surrounding coastlines to heights of up to 3-20m above sea level. The Storegga Slide coincided with the last major abrupt climate change – the so called 8.2ka event. This talk will explore the evidence for (and against) the links between major submarine landslides and climate change, and pulses of sediment delivery by cross-shelf ice streams. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of these huge underwater slides is that they occur on slopes of 1,200km of swath bathymetry lines from the Nordic Seas. It will conclude with recent work on direct monitoring of other types of sediment mass flow (turbidity currents), which it is hoped to extend to glacially fed systems.