Reconstructing Climate from Glaciers

Glaciers offer the potential to reconstruct past climate over timescales from decades to millennia. They are found on nearly every continent, and at the Last Glacial Maximum, glaciers were larger in all regions on Earth. The physics of glacier-climate interaction are relatively well understood, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of earth and planetary sciences 2017-08, Vol.45 (1), p.649-680
Main Authors: Mackintosh, Andrew N, Anderson, Brian M, Pierrehumbert, Raymond T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon dioxide
Climate
Climate change
Climate models
Climate sensitivity
Cloud-climate relationships
Earth
Glacier retreat
Glaciers
Global warming
Last Glacial Maximum
modeling
Modelling
moraines
paleoclimate
Paleoclimate science
Physics
proxy
Sea surface
Sea surface temperature
Surface temperature
Tropical environments
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Summary:Glaciers offer the potential to reconstruct past climate over timescales from decades to millennia. They are found on nearly every continent, and at the Last Glacial Maximum, glaciers were larger in all regions on Earth. The physics of glacier-climate interaction are relatively well understood, and glacier models can be used to reconstruct past climate from geological evidence of past glacier extent. This can lead to significant insights regarding past, present, and future climate. For example, glacier modeling has demonstrated that the near-ubiquitous global pattern of glacier retreat during the last few centuries resulted from a global-scale climate warming of ∼1°C, consistent with instrumental data and climate proxy records. Climate reconstructions from glaciers have also demonstrated that the tropics were colder at the Last Glacial Maximum than was originally inferred from sea surface temperature reconstructions. Future efforts to reconstruct climate from glaciers may provide new constraints on climate sensitivity to CO 2 forcing, polar amplification of climate change, and more.
ISSN:0084-6597
1545-4495
DOI:10.1146/annurev-earth-063016-020643