Articles | Volume 17, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3363-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3363-2023
Research article
 | 
21 Aug 2023
Research article |  | 21 Aug 2023

Permafrost saline water and Early to mid-Holocene permafrost aggradation in Svalbard

Dotan Rotem, Vladimir Lyakhovsky, Hanne Hvidtfeldt Christiansen, Yehudit Harlavan, and Yishai Weinstein

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Cited articles

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Short summary
Frozen saline pore water, left over from post-glacial marine ingression, was found in shallow permafrost in a Svalbard fjord valley. This suggests that freezing occurred immediately after marine regression due to isostatic rebound. We conducted top-down freezing simulations, which confirmed that with Early to mid-Holocene temperatures (e.g. −4 °C), freezing could progress down to 20–40 m within 200 years. This, in turn, could inhibit flow through the sediment, therefore preserving saline fluids.