Southern Greenland glaciation and Western Boundary Undercurrent evolution recorded on Eirik Drift during the late Pliocene intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation

We present new sedimentological and environmental magnetic records spanning ∼3.2–2.2 Ma, during the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, from North Atlantic Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1307 on Eirik Drift. Our new datasets and their high-fidelity age control demonstrate that while inland glaciers – and potentially also at times restricted iceberg-calving margins – have likely existed on southern Greenland since at least ∼3.2 Ma, persistent and extensive iceberg-calving glacial margins were only established in this region at 2.72 Ma, ∼300 kyr later than in northeastern and eastern Greenland. Despite a dramatic increase in Greenland-sourced ice-rafted debris deposition on Eirik Drift at this time, contemporaneous changes in the bulk magnetic properties of Site U1307 sediments, and a reduction in sediment accumulation rates, suggest a decrease in the delivery of Greenland-sourced glaciofluvial silt to our study site. We attribute these changes to a shift in depositional regime from bottom-current-dominated to glacial-IRD-dominated between ∼2.9 and 2.7 Ma, in response to a change in the depth of the flow path of the Western Boundary Undercurrent relative to our study site.