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International audience; Recent investigations have shown that the continental shelf west of Ireland contains sedimentary landforms recording occupation by grounded, lobate ice sheet margins that extended from Ireland during at least the last glacial cycle. This paper reviews some of the offshore evidence of past glacial events available from high-resolution bathymetry, 2D/3D seismic datasets (Fig. 1), and shallow sediment cores providing information on the sedimentology, rheology and age of glacigenic stratigraphic units. The available data suggest that the continental shelf has been repeatedly occupied by tidewater ice margins characterised by ice streaming, possibly since the mid-Pleistocene transition. The offshore record provides as yet incomplete information on the extent and timing of glaciation from multiple centres of dispersal in Ireland. The dynamics of former ice sheets in Ireland, downwind of the climatically important central North Atlantic region, makes them of wider interest in the study of partially marine based ice sheet-ocean interactions in rapidly changing environments.

International audience; The reconstruction of the largest ice stream to drain the British-Irish Ice Sheet at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) can provide essential palaeoglacial observations required for constraining numerical ice sheet models. The Irish Sea Ice Stream (ISIS) was long considered to have terminated on the mid-shelf of the Celtic Sea, based on sediment cores and seismic data collected in the 1970s. Here we summarise findings from sediment cores and geophysical data acquired since 2009, and multi-beam bathymetric data acquired since 2001, which permit an updated evolution and palaeoglacial reconstruction of the Irish and UK sectors of the Celtic Sea shelf. In near-shore areas, multi-beam data reveal over 2000 glacial features, including moraine ridges, streamlined bedrock and meltwater channels, recording the southwest advance of the ISIS towards the shelf-edge and its subsequent retreat. The mid- to outer-shelf is characterised by the largest known linear shelf sediment ridges. These vary from long and linear features, the megaridges, in the northwest to sinuous and shorter ridges in the southeast. This ridge field was initially interpreted as tidal in origin, but glacigenic sediments have been recovered from the flanks of the megaridges. Correlating decimetric-resolution geophysical data to sediment cores, the megaridges comprise three main units. 1) A superficial fining-upward drape above an unconformity, inferred to record decreasing ocean energy during marine transgression. Underlying this drape is 2), the Melville Formation (MFm), which comprises the upper bulk of the megaridges, displaying dipping internal acoustic reflections and consisting of medium to coarse sand and gravel, characteristics that could be consistent with either a tidal or glacifluvial origin. The MFm unconformably overlies 3), the Upper Little Sole Formation (ULSFm), previously proposed to be of late Pliocene to early Pleistocene age, but is here shown to contain glacigenic sediments dated to the LGM. This stratigraphy constrains the age of the MFm to between 24-14 ka BP, coeval with deglaciation and a modelled period of megatidal conditions during transgression. Stratigraphically and sedimentologically these megaridges could represent glacifluvial features eroded during the post-glacial marine transgression. However, it is argued that they comprise a partially-eroded glacial topography (ULSFm) mantled by post-glacial tidal deposits (MFm), both subsequently eroded by a proposed mechanism of enhanced wave energy during decreasing tidal energy in the later stages of transgression. Regardless of the origin of the ridges, the evidence shows that the ISIS extended to the shelf-edge of the Irish and UK sectors during the LGM.

International audience; Ice sheets have occupied the Atlantic continental margin of Europe as far south as the Celtic Sea, where the maximum extent of glaciation remains in question. The Celtic Sea contains no obvious glacial landforms, but is dominated by a system of shelf-crossing seafloor megaridges, up to 60 m high and 10 km wide, that extend seaward up to 300 km in water depths of 100-200 m. The last British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) was thought to have reached a limit on the mid-shelf, based on glacigenic sediments sampled on and between megaridges in the Irish-UK sectors, but recent work in this area has shown that the BIIS extended at least 150 km farther, at minimum to the UK shelf edge at 48˚20'N. Stratigraphic analysis of newly acquired core and seismic data has indicated the megaridges to be eroded sand bodies, which can be interpreted as a) glaciofluvial ridges modified by post-glacial megatides, or b) tidal banks truncated by wave energy. Here we examine megaridge morphology using a regional bathymetric grid and multibeam data across a 25x100 km area of the mid-shelf. At regional scale, the megaridges fan seaward to meet the shelf edge near-transversely along 600 km of its length, their axes rotating by 80˚ from W-E (Irish shelf) to almost N-S (French shelf). The fan-shaped network points to an apex in the north Celtic Sea, yet axial convergences are more common to seaward than landward. Individual megaridges consist of segments tens of kms long, of differing orientation, that form bathymetric highs. On the Irish-UK mid-shelf, multibeam imagery show that en echelon megaridge segments (up to 40 km long, 7 km wide, 55 m high) give way both axially and laterally to transverse 'ribs' (up to 10 km long, 10 m high). The ribs vary in form and spacing, distinct from asymmetric regularly-spaced sand waves within the multibeam data. Glacigenic sediments have been reported near seabed on and between both the megaridges and ribs, but subglacial lineations are not observed at seafloor. We hypothesise that the rectilinear network of megaridges and ribs are the eroded remnants of giant eskerine ridges flanked by glaciofluvial De Geer moraines, formed time-transgressively along an ice sheet margin during its retreat from the shelf edge. If correct, this interpretation would have broad implications for the dynamics of the last BIIS, and for the supply of meltwater and sediment across the shelf and slope to the North Atlantic at the LGM. Glaciofluvial vs tidal models for the formation of Celtic Sea bedforms invite testing through the targeted acquisition of core data, notably from areas of existing multibeam data in both the Irish-UK and French sectors.

International audience; The Irish Sea Ice Stream (ISIS) has long had one of the best documented retreat histories of the British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) and was the first ice stream to be constrained by Bayesian analysis of geochronological data. These attributes made it a model system for the BRITICE-CHRONO research project, which aims to produce the best constrained retreat record of any palaeo-ice sheet contributing key observational constraints for ice sheet modelling. The project has generated a suite of new radiocarbon ages from deglacial sequences offshore in the Celtic and Irish seas and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide and optically-stimulated luminescence ages from ice-marginal sites in the Isles of Scilly, Ireland, Wales and NW England. The ISIS was unusual within the former BIIS, in that it was a compound ice stream with two outlets, one marine terminating that flowed through the Irish Sea Basin into the Celtic Sea, and a terrestrial terminus that flowed southwards through Cheshire-Shropshire lowlands into the English Midlands around 25.5 ka. Here we assess the retreat dynamics across the entirety of the ISIS, integrating the new chronology in a revised Bayesian analysis that constrains the pattern and timing ice marginal fluctuations. The retreat chronology in the Irish Sea is better constrained than in the Celtic Sea, where the ISIS is now recognised to have extended as far as the continental shelf break to the SW of Britain and Ireland between 24 and 27 ka; this advance was synchronous with independently-dated ice-rafted detritus from ISIS in adjacent deep-sea cores. The ISIS then retreated rapidly northwards through the Celtic Sea, with evidence for readvance phases, deglaciating the Isles of Scilly at 25.5 ka, reaching St Georges Channel by 24.3 ka and the Llŷn Peninsula by 23.9 ka. The initiation of retreat from both the eastern (terrestrial) and western (marine) components of ISIS was synchronous. The eastern terrestrial lobe had vacated the Cheshire-Shropshire lowlands by 22-21 ka. The complex readvance sequences identified on the Llŷn (24-20ka) and in eastern Ireland have now been tightly constrained to register centennial-scale oscillations of the ice front driven by internal ice dynamics over topographic pinning points and constrictions of the ice-stream. Retreat northwards into the northern Irish Sea then accelerated, first evacuating the deeper water of the western Irish Sea, and developing pronounced ice margins across the northern Isle of Man by 19.1 ka. The final retreat phase, with ice margins pulling back onto terrestrial settings in the English Lake District, the north of Ireland and SW Scotland around 17 ka, was a deglaciation accomplished in a fully marine context evidenced by the preservation on the seabed of subglacial landforms and by increasing influence of local ice sources with flow realignment during draw-down and ice margin retreat.