CENOSTORE

The intensification of the global glacial-interglacial cycle at the onset of the Quaternary (~2.6 Ma) was a critical tipping-point in Earth's recent climate history.

The increased severity of cold conditions at the Plio-Pleistocene boundary triggered the development of large-scale continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere.

Since then, the North Sea Basin (NSB) experienced multiple glacial-interglacial cycles in terrestrial and shallow marine settings.

Unlike the onshore record, the NSB uniquely preserves an almost complete record of glacial erosion and deposition from European ice sheets, as well as sediment input from large rivers systems.

This dynamic growth and retreat of ice sheets bordering the NSB, and its subsidence history, have resulted in a thick Quaternary sedimentary sequence containing a detailed stratigraphic record of Northern Hemisphere environmental change.

Relatively little is known about global Quaternary ice sheet fluctuations except for estimates on global ice volume with poor chronological control.

There is evidence that Quaternary ice sheets generated strong feedback loops that subsequently affected the evolution of the global climate system through complex ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere linkages.

Thus, the Quaternary sedimentary sequence preserved in the North Sea is a significant palaeo-climate archive capturing environmental changes across millions of years. As the NSB is a mature petroleum basin, it is covered by extensive seismic and borehole data. The NSB is covered by the North Sea which is a shallow (generally