A high-resolution Holocene paleomagnetic secular variation and relative paleointensity stack from eastern Canada

A high-resolution Holocene paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) and relative paleointensity (RPI) stack was constructed using u-channel paleomagnetic data from six radiocarbon-constrained marine sedimentary sequences raised along the main axis of the Laurentian Channel (eastern Canada), from its head to its mouth. Centennial- to millennial-scale declination and inclination features of the eastern Canadian stack can be correlated, within the dating uncertainties, with other Holocene North American, Icelandic and European PSV records, suggesting a common, possibly hemispheric in character, geomagnetic origin. Both magnetic inclination and declination of the eastern Canadian stack are generally consistent with the time-varying spherical harmonic model of the geomagnetic field CALS7k.2, notably during the last similar to 4000 cal BP. In addition, the eastern Canadian Holocene RPI stack reveals similar millennial and even centennial time-scale variations consistent with some virtual axial dipole moment (VADM) reconstructions derived from absolute paleointensity data as well as with North American lacustrine RPI records. Accordingly, these results suggest that the Holocene paleomagnetic secular variation in North America is significantly driven by large-scale (>5000 km) geomagnetic field changes at these timescales. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.