The disappearance of glaciers in the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia at the end of Pleistocene

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:103

Article

Takeuchi, Nozomu¹  Fujita, Koji²  Aizen, Vladimir B.³  Narama, Chiyuki⁴  Yokoyama, Yusuke⁵  Okamoto, Sachiko²  Naoki, Kazuhiro⁶  Kubota, Jumpei⁷ 

[1] Chiba Univ, Grad Sch Sci, Dept Earth Sci, Chiba 2638522, Japan

[2] Nagoya Univ, Grad Sch Environm Studies, Nagoya, Aichi 4648601, Japan

[3] Univ Idaho, Coll Sci, Moscow, ID 83843 USA

[4] Niigata Univ, Dept Environm Sci, Niigata 9502181, Japan

[5] Univ Tokyo, Atmosphere & Ocean Res Inst, Chiba 2778564, Japan

[6] Tokai Univ, Res & Informat Ctr, Tokyo 1510063, Japan

[7] Res Inst Humanity & Nat, Kyoto 6038047, Japan

关键词: Bolling-Allerod;    Glaciers;    Ice core;    Holocene;    Deglaciation;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.09.006

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Glaciers in Central Asia are among the largest ice masses in the Eurasian continent and have supplied vital water to local inhabitants for thousands of years. The glaciers in this region are generally believed to be remnants of the last deglaciation, however, glacier variability in the central Asian mountains since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) has not been well documented. Here, we report an 86.87 m-deep ice core record drilled on an ice cap in the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia. Radiocarbon dating of organic soil from the bottom of the ice-core borehole showed that the age of the soil was 12,656 - 12,434 cal years before present, coincident with the beginning of the Younger Dryas cold period (YD). This result indicates that the ice cap did not exist in the Bolling-Allerod period (BA), which was the warm period before the YD, and that the BA climate was significantly warmer than at present. It also indicates that the ice cap has never entirely disappeared in any warm periods throughout the Holocene. We estimated that during the BA its extent was 43% or less of the present glacier coverage in the mountains. Our results suggest that this region at the end of Pleistocene was considerably warmer than at present, and that most of the present glaciers in this region are not relics of the Last Glacial period, but are composed of ice formed during the YD and Holocene. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

【 授权许可】

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