scholarly journals Early Holocene cold snaps and their expression in the moraine record of the Eastern European Alps

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra M. Braumann ◽  
Joerg M. Schaefer ◽  
Stephanie M. Neuhuber ◽  
Christopher Lüthgens ◽  
Alan J. Hidy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Early Holocene ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
European Alps ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Exposure Dating ◽  
The Past

Abstract. Glaciers preserve climate variations in their geological and geomorphological records, which makes them prime candidates for climate reconstructions. Investigating the glacier-climate system over the past millennia is particularly relevant because, first, the amplitude and frequency of natural climate variability during the Holocene provides the climatic context against which modern, human-induced climate change must be assessed. Second, the transition from the last glacial to the current interglacial promises important insights into the climate system during warming, which is of particular interest with respect to ongoing climate change. Evidence of stable ice margin positions that record cooling during the past 12 ka are preserved in two glaciated valleys of the Silvretta Massif in the Eastern European Alps, the Jamtal (JAM) and the Laraintal (LAR). We mapped and dated moraines in these catchments including historical ridges using Beryllium-10 Surface Exposure Dating (10Be SED) techniques, and correlate resulting moraine formation intervals with climate proxy records to evaluate the spatial and temporal scale of these cold phases. The new geochronologies indicate two moraine formation intervals (MFI) during the Early Holocene (EH): 10.8 ± 0.7 ka (n = 9) and 11.2 ± 0.8 ka (n = 12). Boulder ages along historical moraines (n = 6) imply at least two glacier advances during the Little Ice Age (LIA; c. 1250–1850 CE), around 1300 CE and in the second half of the 18th century. An earlier advance to the same position may have occurred around 500 CE. The Jamtal and Laraintal moraine chronologies provide evidence that millennial scale EH warming was superimposed by centennial scale cooling. The timing of EH moraine formation is contemporaneous with brief temperature drops identified in local and regional paleoproxy records, most prominently with the Preboreal Oscillation (PBO), and is consistent with moraine deposition in other catchments in the European Alps, and in the Arctic region. This consistency points to cooling beyond the local scale and therefore a regional or even hemispheric climate driver. Freshwater input sourced from the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), which changed circulation patterns in the North Atlantic, is a plausible explanation for EH cooling and moraine formation in the Nordic region and in Europe.

scholarly journals Early Holocene cold snaps and their expression in the moraine record of the eastern European Alps

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 2451-2479
Author(s):  
Sandra M. Braumann ◽  
Joerg M. Schaefer ◽  
Stephanie M. Neuhuber ◽  
Christopher Lüthgens ◽  
Alan J. Hidy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Early Holocene ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
European Alps ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Exposure Dating ◽  
The Past

Abstract. Glaciers preserve climate variations in their geological and geomorphological records, which makes them prime candidates for climate reconstructions. Investigating the glacier–climate system over the past millennia is particularly relevant first because the amplitude and frequency of natural climate variability during the Holocene provides the climatic context against which modern, human-induced climate change must be assessed. Second, the transition from the last glacial to the current interglacial promises important insights into the climate system during warming, which is of particular interest with respect to ongoing climate change. Evidence of stable ice margin positions that record cooling during the past 12 kyr are preserved in two glaciated valleys of the Silvretta Massif in the eastern European Alps, the Jamtal (JAM) and the Laraintal (LAR). We mapped and dated moraines in these catchments including historical ridges using beryllium-10 surface exposure dating (10Be SED) techniques and correlate resulting moraine formation intervals with climate proxy records to evaluate the spatial and temporal scale of these cold phases. The new geochronologies indicate the formation of moraines during the early Holocene (EH), ca. 11.0 ± 0.7 ka (n = 19). Boulder ages along historical moraines (n = 6) suggest at least two glacier advances during the Little Ice Age (LIA; ca. 1250–1850 CE) around 1300 CE and in the second half of the 18th century. An earlier advance to the same position may have occurred around 500 CE. The Jamtal and Laraintal moraine chronologies provide evidence that millennial-scale EH warming was superimposed by centennial-scale cooling. The timing of EH moraine formation coincides with brief temperature drops identified in local and regional paleoproxy records, most prominently with the Preboreal Oscillation (PBO) and is consistent with moraine deposition in other catchments in the European Alps and in the Arctic region. This consistency points to cooling beyond the local scale and therefore a regional or even hemispheric climate driver. Freshwater input sourced from the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), which changed circulation patterns in the North Atlantic, is a plausible explanation for EH cooling and moraine formation in the Nordic region and in Europe.

Áhrif loftlagsbreytinga á vatnsveitur og vatnsgæði á Íslandi – áhættuþættir og aðgerðir

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
María J. Gunnarsdóttir ◽  
Sigurður Magnús Garðarsson ◽  
Hrund Ólöf Andradóttir ◽  
Alfreð Schiöth
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Factors ◽  
Water Quality ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Surveillance Area ◽  
The Arctic Region

Climate change is expected to have impact on water supply and drinking water quality in Iceland. Foremost there are three influential weather-related factors; increase in temperature; rise in sea level; and seasonal and regional change in precipitation in both quantity and intensity. In this study international and local reports and articles were analyzed for expected impact on the water resource with emphasis on the northern and the arctic region. Water quality risk factors were analyzed based on surveillance data of the water supplies from the Local Competent Authorities. Preliminary risk assessment of landslides and flooding was performed in one surveillance area in northern Iceland.

Peculiarities of land development and construction in the Arctic region, given the dynamics of climate change

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
G.I. Bykova ◽  
M.A. Grippas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Development ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Arctic Seas ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Great Danger

The article covers the specifics of land development and construction in the Arctic North. This requires the effective use of climate information to select optimal solutions for preventing unjustified overpricing of facilities, increased heat loss, low thermal resistance, and durability, affecting the overspending of capital investments. Recent trends in dynamic climate change leading to rising global sea levels, which could flood coastal areas of the Arctic seas, are considered. This can come along with the destruction of the coastal area and pose a great danger to infrastructure facilities.

scholarly journals Late Holocene summer temperatures in the central Andes reconstructed from the sediments of high-elevation Laguna Chepical, Chile (32° S)

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 2277-2308
Author(s):  
R. de Jong ◽  
L. von Gunten ◽  
A. Maldonado ◽  
M. Grosjean
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South America ◽  
Temperature Reconstruction ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Central Chile ◽  
Southern South America ◽  
Calibration Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract. High-resolution reconstructions of climate variability that cover the past millennia are necessary to improve the understanding of natural and anthropogenic climate change across the globe. Although numerous records are available for the mid- and high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, global assessments are still compromised by the scarcity of data from the Southern Hemisphere. This is particularly the case for the tropical and subtropical areas. In addition, high elevation sites in the South American Andes may provide insight into the vertical structure of climate change in the mid-troposphere. This study presents a 3000 yr long austral summer (November to February) temperature reconstruction derived from the 210Pb and 14C dated organic sediments of Laguna Chepical (32°16' S/70°30' W, 3050 m a.s.l.), a high-elevation glacial lake in the subtropical Andes of central Chile. Scanning reflectance spectroscopy in the visible light range provided the spectral index R570/R630, which reflects the clay mineral content in lake sediments. For the calibration period (AD 1901–2006), the R570/R630 data were regressed against monthly meteorological reanalysis data, showing that this proxy was strongly and significantly correlated with mean summer (NDJF) temperatures (R3yr = −0.63, padj = 0.01). This calibration model was used to make a quantitative temperature reconstruction back to 1000 BC. The reconstruction (with a model error RMSEPboot of 0.33 °C) shows that the warmest decades of the past 3000 yr occurred during the calibration period. The 19th century (end of the Little Ice Age (LIA)) was cool. The prominent warmth reconstructed for the 18th century, which was also observed in other records from this area, seems systematic for subtropical and southern South America but remains difficult to explain. Except for this warm period, the LIA was generally characterized by cool summers. Back to AD 1400, the results from this study compare remarkably well to low altitude records from the Chilean Central Valley and Southern South America. However, the reconstruction from Laguna Chepical does not show a warm Medieval Climate Anomaly during the 12–13th century, which is consistent with records from tropical South America. The Chepical record also indicates substantial cooling prior to 800 BC. This coincides with well-known regional as well as global glacier advances which have been attributed to a grand solar minimum. This study thus provides insight into the climatic drivers and temperature patterns in a region for which currently very few data are available. It also shows that since ca AD 1400, long term temperature patterns were generally similar at low and high altitudes in central Chile.

Climate Variability in the Context of Climate Change: El Niño and Other Oscillations

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Rosenzweig ◽  
Daniel Hillel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
El Niño ◽  
El Nino ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate System ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Earth’S Climate

The climate system envelops our planet, with swirling fluxes of mass, momentum, and energy through air, water, and land. Its processes are partly regular and partly chaotic. The regularity of diurnal and seasonal fluctuations in these processes is well understood. Recently, there has been significant progress in understanding some of the mechanisms that induce deviations from that regularity in many parts of the globe. These mechanisms include a set of combined oceanic–atmospheric phenomena with quasi-regular manifestations. The largest of these is centered in the Pacific Ocean and is known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The term “oscillation” refers to a shifting pattern of atmospheric pressure gradients that has distinct manifestations in its alternating phases. In the Arctic and North Atlantic regions, the occurrence of somewhat analogous but less regular interactions known as the Arctic Oscillation and its offshoot, the North Atlantic Oscillation, are also being studied. These and other major oscillations influence climate patterns in many parts of the globe. Examples of other large-scale interactive ocean–atmosphere– land processes are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, the Pacific/North American pattern, the Tropical Atlantic Variability, the West Pacific pattern, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, and the Indian Ocean Dipole. In this chapter we review the earth’s climate system in general, define climate variability, and describe the processes related to ENSO and the other major systems and their interactions. We then consider the possible connections of the major climate variability systems to anthropogenic global climate change. The climate system consists of a series of fluxes and transformations of energy (radiation, sensible and latent heat, and momentum), as well as transports and changes in the state of matter (air, water, solid matter, and biota) as conveyed and influenced by the atmosphere, the ocean, and the land masses. Acting like a giant engine, this dynamic system is driven by the infusion, transformation, and redistribution of energy.

The Frontier Research System for Global Change—The International Arctic Research Center (Frontier-IARC): its Origin and Tentative Science Plan

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-84
Author(s):  
Jinro Ukila ◽  
Moloyoshi Ikeda
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
Research Center ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Research System

The Frontier Research System for Global Change—the International Arctic Research Center (Frontier-IARC) is a research program funded by the Frontier Research System for Global Change. The program is jointly run under a cooperative agreement between the Frontier Research System for Global Change and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The aim of the program is to understand the role of the Arctic region in global climate change. The program concentrates its research effort initially on the areas of air-sea-ice interactions, bio-geochemical processes and the ecosystem. To understand the arctic climate system in the context of global climate change, we focus on mechanisms controlling arctic-subarctic interactions, and identify three key components: the freshwater balance, the energy balance, and the large-scale atmospheric processes. Knowledge of details of these components and their interactions will be gained through long-term monitoring, process studies, and modeling; our focus will be on the latter two categories.

scholarly journals International and Domestic Law Dimensions of Climate Justice for Arctic Indigenous Peoples

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 113-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner ◽  
Randall S. Abate
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The Arctic region is in crisis from the effects of climate change. The impacts of climate change pose a particular threat to Arctic indigenous communities. Because of the disproportionate impacts of climate change, these indigenous communities are environmental justice communities. Part I of this article discusses how indigenous nations are environmental justice communities and discusses the unique factors that may apply to environmental justice claims arising in Indian country. The article then presents two case studies to explore how, if at all, these concepts have been previously applied to environmental justice claims brought by various Arctic indigenous communities. Part II addresses the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Part III considers the Native Village of Kivalina’s lawsuit against numerous private emitters of greenhouse gases. These case studies underscore the failure of international and domestic forums’ consideration of the special situation of Arctic indigenous peoples as environmental justice communities.

Visualizing climate change in the Arctic and beyond: Participatory media and the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP), and interactive Indigenous Arctic media

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott MacKenzie ◽  
Anna Westerstahl Stenport
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Big Data Visualization ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Vexing Problem ◽  
The Arctic Region

Impactful communication remains a vexing problem for climate science researchers and public outreach. This article identifies a range of moving images and screen-based media used to visualize climate change, focusing especially on the Arctic region and the efforts of the United Nations. The authors examine the aesthetics of big data visualization of melting sea ice and glaciers made by NASA and similar entities; eye-witness, expert accounts and youth-produced documentaries designed for United Nations delegates to the annual COP events such as the Youth Climate Report; Please Help the World, the dystopian cli-fi narrative produced for the UN’s COP 15; and Isuma TV’s streaming of works by Indigenous practitioners in Nunavut.

scholarly journals Episodic Neoglacial expansion and rapid 20th century retreat of a small ice cap on Baffin Island, Arctic Canada, and modeled temperature change

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1527-1537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon L. Pendleton ◽  
Gifford H. Miller ◽  
Robert A. Anderson ◽  
Sarah E. Crump ◽  
Yafang Zhong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temperature Change ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Baffin Island ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ice Cap ◽  
Climate Model Simulations ◽  
Glacier Advance

Abstract. Records of Neoglacial glacier activity in the Arctic constructed from moraines are often incomplete due to a preservation bias toward the most extensive advance, often the Little Ice Age. Recent warming in the Arctic has caused extensive retreat of glaciers over the past several decades, exposing preserved landscapes complete with in situ tundra plants previously entombed by ice. The radiocarbon ages of these plants define the timing of snowline depression and glacier advance across the site, in response to local summer cooling. Erosion rapidly removes most dead plants that have been recently exposed by ice retreat, but where erosive processes are unusually weak, dead plants may remain preserved on the landscape for decades. In such settings, a transect of plant radiocarbon ages can be used to construct a near-continuous chronology of past ice margin advance. Here we present radiocarbon dates from the first such transect on Baffin Island, which directly dates the advance of a small ice cap over the past two millennia. The nature of ice expansion between 20 BCE and ∼ 1000 CE is still uncertain, but episodic advances at ∼ 1000 CE, ∼ 1200, and  ∼ 1500 led to the maximum Neoglacial dimensions ~ 1900 CE. We employ a two-dimensional numerical glacier model calibrated using the plant radiocarbon ages ice margin chronology to assess the sensitivity of the ice cap to temperature change. Model experiments show that at least ∼ 0.44 °C of cooling over the past 2 kyr is required for the ice cap to reach its 1900 CE margin, and that the period from ∼ 1000 to 1900 CE must have been at least 0.25° C cooler than the previous millennium, results that agree with regional temperature reconstructions and climate model simulations. However, significant warming since 1900 CE is required to explain retreat to its present position, and, at the same rate of warming, the ice cap will disappear before 2100 CE.

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