Large Scale Climate Teleconnections Driving Marine Black Shale Formation Across the Jurassic Boreal Seaway (KFC): A Geochemistry-Modelling Perspective

Expanded successions of marine black shale provide important proxy records to test climatic teleconnections across ocean basins and paleo-latitudes. The causal and generic relationships controlling the timing, composition, and internal variability of marine organic carbon (OC)-rich shale over large distances and during variable global climate states are, however, far from understood but relevant for hydrocarbon generation potential. Despite detailed documentation of the processes operating in individual ocean settings and under specific climatic conditions, it remains a challenge to present a unifying concept that explains the generic and far field interconnections between climate zones and ocean basins at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Progress towards such a unifying model has been made for the Cretaceous Atlantic providing an important step forward to simulate the location and internal heterogeneity of black shale formation more reliably, especially for areas where limited field data exist due to harsh or remote conditions, such as the Mesozoic Arctic. In this study we combine new, high resolution geochemical and sedimentological records from the Jurassic boreal seaway, where widespread deposition of the Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation (KFC) is well documented with large scale climate and biogeochemical modelling, placing the seaway into a global climatic context.