All available data on suspended sediment concentration and sediment discharge for Central Asian rivers have been used to estimate the small-grained sediment discharge from glaciated areas. Glacial streams discharge the bulk of suspended material during the period of intensive melting (July to September). There is a good exponential relationship between the suspended sediment concentration (or sediment discharge) and air temperature over glaciers. The area of the largest glacier in the watershed is another factor influencing the silt content and sediment run-off. Its contribution is smaller than that of air temperature. Yearly sediment run-off for glacial rivers in the Pamir and Tien Shan has been computed. Highest values are from the Pamir with many rivers yielding 3000 tonnes km–2 (11 200 tonnes km–2 for the Vukhsh river). The highest run-off in Tien Shan is 2 000 tonnes km–2 for the Chatkal river.

Antarctic researches of the last decades have provided new facts which have made scientists change their ideas. The researches have shown a great difference between the history of the Antarctic and the northern hemisphere glaciation. The former is very old and stable, while the latter was ephemeral. An analogous one to the Antarctic ice sheet in the northern hemisphere is the Greenland inland ice. Both ice sheets are of continental-insular type; the Pleistocene ice sheets were of continental type proper. Icethickness measurements showed the topography of the bed under Antarctic ice and revealed a special type of ice sheet lying partly on the sea-floor: the West Antarctic continental-marine ice sheet. Such ice sheets could exist in the northern hemisphere too. They were especially unstable and their formation and destruction could serve as a triggering mechanism in alternating glacials and interglacials. The main concept is: all the great climatic variations during the Pleistocene were glacioclimatic ones where the feedback mechanism was the most important factor. But there are many details which are uncertain. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are the key regions to research so that problems of glacioclimatology could be solved.

This paper is devoted to the causes of initiation and development of the Quaternary glaciation and climatic fluctuations connected with it. There are many hypotheses on this problem. The most interesting of them are those suggesting the evolution of glaciers and ice sheets, and variation of climate as a self-regulating process. The first person to offer a definite mechanism for such self-regulation was the Russian sailor, Captain E. S. Gernet, whose book about this was published in 1930. The book is of great scientific importance, but so far few people appear to have known anything about it. This paper gives a brief summary of the book, shows the similarity between the main ideas of Captain Gernet and the American geologists, W. L. Stokes, M. Ewing and W. L. Donn (the theory of the two latter authors has become well known recently), and justifies naming this concept after Gernet and Stokes in honour of the men who first proposed it.

Antarctic researches of the last decades have provided new facts which have made scientists change their ideas. The researches have shown a great difference between the history of the Antarctic and the northern hemisphere glaciation. The former is very old and stable, while the latter was ephemeral. An analogous one to the Antarctic ice sheet in the northern hemisphere is the Greenland inland ice. Both ice sheets are of continental-insular type; the Pleistocene ice sheets were of continental type proper. Icethickness measurements showed the topography of the bed under Antarctic ice and revealed a special type of ice sheet lying partly on the sea-floor: the West Antarctic continental-marine ice sheet. Such ice sheets could exist in the northern hemisphere too. They were especially unstable and their formation and destruction could serve as a triggering mechanism in alternating glacials and interglacials. The main concept is: all the great climatic variations during the Pleistocene were glacioclimatic ones where the feedback mechanism was the most important factor. But there are many details which are uncertain. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are the key regions to research so that problems of glacioclimatology could be solved.