Glaciological studies in Mexico, 60 years of academic work: A summary

Abstract

Glaciers have played a very important role in controlling the climate during most of the geologic history of our planet Earth. Of course, the glaciers have always been at higher latitudes (north and south), and some on high-altitude mountains. Current glaciers in Mexico are those inherited from the Last Glacial Maximum, (26000 - 19000 years before the present), increasing in size during the period of the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 common era), and they are unique in several ways; they are located at 19° north latitude, and they received snow precipitation from both the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico (Atlantic Ocean). Research on glacial chronology, physical glaciology, and glacial geochemistry at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has provided valuable information on climate and environmental changes at different time scales, from millennial to decadal, and even annual. The first part of this work deals with the reconstruction of the glacial history in Mexico and establishing a glacial chronology from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Little Ice Age. The second part of this work focuses on monitoring recent changes (the last 60 years, 1960s to 2023) of the glacier extent on Iztaccíhuatl, Popocatépetl, and Citlaltépetl (the three highest mountains in Mexico), as well as having an updated inventory of all the glaciers at those mountains. Changes in glacier extent and thickness of ice are directly related to the increase in air temperature, variation in precipitation patterns, and glacier dynamics on some of the last glaciers of the northern tropics. The third part or this work focuses on a compilation of geochemical data from 17 years (from 2006 to 2013) of sampling ice (shallow ice cores) and snow at Iztaccíhuatl and Citlaltépetl glaciers. This database has the potential for providing interesting and useful information on natural and anthropogenic-induced changes related to the occurrence of heavy metals in tropical glaciers in the northern hemisphere of North America. Black carbon concentrations analyzed in snow and glacier ice, and preliminary data on stable isotopes of Zn, also add information on natural vs. anthropogenic sources of heavy metals in central Mexico.