Reconstructed Pleistocene Ice-Sheet Temperatures and Glacial Erosion in Northern Scotland

Abstract

AbstractPleistocene ice-sheet temperatures are reconstructed for a west-to-east transect across northern Scotland at the ice maximum using the temperature-profile model of Budd and others (1971[a]). Basal freezing is predicted for the central area of the ice sheet, and zones of basal melting on each side to the west and east. Variations in estimates of annual accumulation rate and ice thickness do not greatly alter this general pattern. However, small errors in estimating mean annual temperature at the ice edge and ice-surface temperature lapse-rate may significantly change the pattern of predicted basal temperature regimes, and basal freezing may have extended over the whole of the area considered. Zones of areal scouring occur in both the west and east of the transect but are absent from the central mountain area. Under some of the temperature conditions modelled there is a partial spatial coincidence of the areal scouring in the west with predicted areas of basal melting, but almost none in the east. Possibly this is explained because glacial erosion relates to time periods other than the ice maximum.