Abstract
The dating of well-preserved Holocene moraines in the Qiangyong Valley, southern Tibetan Plateau (TP), offers great potential for reconstructing Holocene glacier extents and examining climate changes in the region. Guided by Holocene moraine features, this study used Geographic Information System (GIS) model tools to reconstruct paleo-glacier surfaces and glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA) depressions for three Holocene glacial stages in the valley. The GIS-based models showed that the Qiangyong Valley contained ice volumes of 8.1 × 108, 6.2 × 108, and 4.6 × 108 m3 during the early Holocene, Neoglacial, and Little Ice Age (LIA) glacial stages, and that the ELA was decreased by ~230 ± 25, ~210 ± 25, and ~165 ± 25 m, respectively, compared to modern conditions. Furthermore, the summer temperatures were estimated to be 1.56–1.79, 1.37–1.64, and 1.29–1.32 °C cooler than present to support the three Holocene glacier extents, based on the evidence that the respective precipitation increased by 20–98, 13–109, and 0.9–11 mm relative to the present, which were derived from the lacustrine pollen data for the southern TP. By comparison, this study found that the amplitudes of the ELA-based summer temperature depressions were much larger than the pollen-based counterparts for the three glacial stages, although the two proxies both showed increasing trends in the reconstructed summer temperatures.
Highlights
Glacier changes over time provide clear evidence of climate variations [1]
Constrained by the Holocene moraine positions, the model results suggested that the Qiangyong Valley contained ice volumes of
The equilibrium line altitude (ELA) depressions compared to current glacier geometry were 230 ± 25, 210 ± 25, and 165 ± 25 m during the three Holocene glacial stages, respectively
Summary
Glacier changes over time provide clear evidence of climate variations [1]. former glacier extents indicated by moraines and trimlines reflect temporal changes in glacier mass balance that were mainly controlled by past annual solid precipitation (snow) and summer temperature [2]. The geomorphology-derived paleoclimate can provide an independent check on fidelity of other nearby terrestrial climate reconstructions and can help to assess the quality of climate model simulations Millennial-scale glacier advance events have been reported as occurring during different periods of the Holocene on the TP, including the early Holocene e.g., [8,13,14] and the mid-late Holocene e.g., [10,13,15,16,17] Even though these studies provide chronological information about the Holocene glacier fluctuations on the TP, little attention has been paid to reconstructing glaciological parameters such as glacier area, ice volume, and glacier equilibrium line altitude (ELA), which are essential to recognize water resource evolution and glacier response to climate change in a mountain region. 10 Be exposure dating by Owen et al (2005) [18] and Liu et al (2017) [19]
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