The Barents–Kara Ice Sheet was an

ice sheet In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacier, glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than . The only current ice sheets are the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet. Ice s ...

which existed during the Weichselian Glaciation. It is named after the seas it was centred upon:

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...

and

Kara Sea The Kara Sea is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all ...

. The ice sheet covered the

Pechora Sea The Pechora Sea (, ) is an Arctic sea to the north-west of European Russia, forming the south-eastern portion of the Barents Sea. It is bordered to the west by Kolguyev Island; to the east by Vaygach Island's western coasts and the Yugorsky ...

, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea,

Novaya Zemlya Novaya Zemlya (, also , ; , ; ), also spelled , is an archipelago in northern Russia. It is situated in the Arctic Ocean, in the extreme northeast of Europe, with Cape Flissingsky, on the northern island, considered the extreme points of Europe ...

and the Kara Sea, likely reaching up to

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

and

Franz Joseph Land Franz Josef Land () is a Russian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It is inhabited only by military personnel. It constitutes the northernmost part of Arkhangelsk Oblast and consists of 192 islands, which cover an area of , stretching from east ...

in the north. In the continent, it covered from the North Russian Plain to the

North Siberian Lowland The North Siberian Lowland (; ), also known as Taymyr Lowland (), is a plain with a relatively flat relief separating the Byrranga Mountains of the Taymyr Peninsula in the north from the Central Siberian Plateau in the south. To the southeast ...

. During the periods 90–80 ka and 60–50 ka, the produced ice-damming resulted in the creation of lakes and a significant rerouting of drainage in northern

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

, including the major rivers

Yenisei The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal and the Krasnoyarsk Dam b ...

, Ob,

Pechora Pechora (; ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in the Komi Republic, Russia, located on the Pechora (river), Pechora River, west of and near the northern Ural Mountains. The area of the town is . Population: History Pechor ...

and Mezen that now flow northwards.Mangerud, J., V. Astakhov and J.-I. Svendsen ''The extent of the Barents-Kara ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum''

Quaternary Science Reviews ''Quaternary Science Reviews'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering quaternary science. It was established in 1982 by Pergamon Press and is currently published by Elsevier. The editor-in-chief is C.V. Murray Wallace (University of Wollo ...

, 2002, v.21 111–119.Polyak, L., V. Gataullin, O. Okuneva and V. Stelle ''New constraints on the limits of the Barents-Kara ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum based on borehole stratigraphy from the Pechora Sea''

Geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

, 2000 v.28(7) 611–614.

References

Ice sheets Barents Sea Kara Sea {{glaciology-stub