Last Glacial Maximum

Enigmatic Climatic Event: Antarctic Cold Reversal

Levan Tielidze February 17, 2023

Figure 1. Dated glacier moraines from New Zealand from the period of Antarctic Cold Reversal (ka signifies thousand calendar years ago). Blue colour symbolizes the reconstructed glacier 12,600 thousand years ago. While line indicate reconstructed snowline or equilibrium line altitude (ELA). [Credit: Tielidze et al., 2023].

In this week’s blog, Levan Tielidze tells us about the insight into the response of mountain glaciers to the Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) event in New Zealand to better understand the climatic history of the Southern Hemisphere during the last deglaciation. The ACR was a cold period occurred in the Southern Hemisphere during the transition from the last glacial period to the current interglacial ...[Read More]

Cryo History – Extent of South Georgia Glaciation during the Last Glacial Maximum

Jack Wilkin July 22, 2022

Figure 1: The different hypotheses for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice extent in South Georgia. Black line = big ice hypothesis (Graham et al., 2017); purple line = little-big ice hypothesis (Barnes et al., 2016); red line = little ice hypothesis (Hodgson et al., 2014).

There has been considerable disagreement amongst researchers concerning the extent of South Georgia’s ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The sub-Antarctic islands (those below the polar front) may have been completely glaciated during previous glacials, and the last largest extent of the South Georgia ice sheet was during the LGM, about 21,000 years ago. But glaciologists don’t agree ...[Read More]

A new glacier chronology from New Zealand

Levan Tielidze July 15, 2022

Figure 1. An example of a dated moraine landform from the Southern Alps. Yellow dots indicate the location of the samples. The black ages are from boulders while the blue ages are from bedrock. The dimension of each age is a thousand years old. The red initials indicate sample names (Credit: Tielidze et al., 2022).

In this week’s blog, Levan Tielidze tells us about the new glacier history from the Southern Alps of New Zealand, an important piece of information to better understand the climatic history of Earth during the Quaternary, the current geologic period. Quaternary glaciations Geochronological dating of glacial moraines is useful for determining the extent and timing of past glaciation and for reconst ...[Read More]