Glacier response to the Little Ice Age during the Neoglacial cooling in Greenland

Kjær, Kurt H.; Björk, Anders; Kjeldsen, Kristian K.; Hansen, Eric Steen; Andresen, Camilla S.; Siggaard-Andersen, Marie-Louise; Khan, Shfaqat Abbas; Søndergaard, Anne; Colgan, William; Schomacker, Anders; Woodroffe, Sarah A.; Funder, Svend; Rouillard, Alexandra; Jensen, Jens Fog; Larsen, Nicolaj K.

doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.103984

Cited by 33 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 253 publications

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“…We find that Kiattuut Sermiat did not readvance into the LMEL or UMEL watersheds during the Little Ice Age, consistent with the location of the glacier's Little Ice Age moraines just outboard of the modern glacier terminus (Winsor et al, 2015). This is unlike the response of many other glaciers in Greenland that deposited their outermost late Holocene moraines during the Little Ice Age (Kelly and Funder, 2009;Kjaer et al, 2022).…”

Section: Late Holocene Retreat From the Narsarsuaq Morainementioning

confidence: 71%

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

Puleo

Axford

2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) outlet glaciers are currently losing mass leading to sea level rise. Reconstructions of past outlet glaciers through the Holocene help us better understand how they respond to climate change. Kiattuut Sermiat, a south Greenland outlet glacier near Narsarsuaq, is known to have experienced an anomalously small Little Ice Age advance compared with a larger Holocene advance that culminated at ~1600 cal yr BP. We report sedimentary records from two lakes at slightly different elevations in an upland valley adjacent to Kiattuut Sermiat, which reveal when the outlet glacier was significantly larger than its Little Ice Age size and constrain the associated outlet glacier surface elevation. We use bulk sediment geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, color, texture, and the presence of aquatic plant macrofossils to distinguish between till, glaciolacustrine sediments, and organic lake sediments. Our 14C results above basal till recording regional deglaciation skew slightly old due to a hard water effect but are generally consistent with regional deglaciation occurring ~11,000 cal yr BP. Neoglacial advance of Kiattuut Sermiat is recorded by deposition of glaciolacustrine sediments in the lower-elevation lake, which was subsumed by an ice-dammed lake that formed along the glacier’s margin just after ~3900 cal yr BP. This timing is consistent with several other glacial records in Greenland showing Neoglacial cooling driving advance between ~4500–3000 cal yr BP. Given that glaciolacustrine sediments were deposited only in the lower-elevation lake, combined with glacial geomorphological evidence in the valley containing these lakes, we estimate the former ice margin’s elevation to have been ~670 m, compared with ~420 m today. The ice-dammed lake persisted until glacier retreat at ~1600 cal yr BP. That retreat timing contrasts with overall evidence for cooling and glacier advance in the region at that time, so we infer that retreat may have resulted from reduced precipitation amounts and/or local glaciological complexity. High sensitivity to precipitation changes could also explain the limited Little Ice Age advance of Kiattuut Sermiat compared to other Greenland glaciers.

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Section: Late Holocene Retreat From the Narsarsuaq Morainementioning

confidence: 71%

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

Puleo

Axford

2023

Preprint

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“…Information on the magnitude and timing of change in erosion rate directly derived from bedrock surfaces can provide unprecedented insight into, for instance, Holocene climatic variations (Bond et al, 1997; Denton & Karlén, 1973) preserved in imprints of glacier fluctuations on rock surfaces (Solomina et al, 2015). Specifically, the OCB chronometer can potentially help us to better reconstruct the spatiotemporal patterns of Holocene glacier advance and retreat in the European Alps (Schimmelpfennig et al, 2022), Central Asia (Rupper et al, 2009), Greenland (Kjær et al, 2022) and Arctic Canada (Briner et al, 2016). The resulting information on glacier dynamics is essential for understanding the Holocene climate variability and assessing the impact of the current anthropogenic climate warming (e.g., Roe et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

OSL‐¹⁴C‐¹⁰Be: A novel composite geochronometer for simultaneous quantification of timing and magnitude of change in bedrock outcrop erosion rate

Sohbati

Hippe²

2022

Earth Surf Processes Landf

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Quantifying past changes in erosion rate is essential for deciphering earth surface processes and their driving mechanisms. Coupled in situ cosmogenic 14 C-10 Be has been shown to be a useful chronometer in detecting changes in erosion rate, but its detection ability is limited to rapidly eroding fluvial landscapes and changes greater than a factor of two; and in any case, it cannot uniquely quantify both the magnitude and the timing of change in erosion rate. Here, we establish a theoretical framework to show that this limitation can be overcome by combining the recently developed optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) rock surface exposure dating with the 14 C-10 Be chronometer. We demonstrate that the resulting OSL-14 C-10 Be composite geochronometer can determine both the magnitude and the timing of an abrupt change in bedrock erosion rate by a factor of < 0.8 or > 1.2 over 10 0 -10 4 a timescales, where erosion rates are < 10 À2 cm a À1 .

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“…In his description of the vegetation of Narsarsuaq (Stumböck 1993) included many lichens. E. S. Hansen carried out lichenometrical measurement using, for example, Pseudephebe minuscula and Rhizocarpon geographicum, in dating of glacier deposits in South West Greenland (Hansen 2010b, Kjaer et al 2022.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Saxicolous lichens from four localities in South West Greenland

Hansen¹

2022

Studia bot hung

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A total of 147 taxa of saxicolous lichens are reported from four localities in South West Greenland. Many lichens are of particular interest and are very rare in this part of Greenland. The following species are selected as typical examples: Gyalidea lecideopsis, Physcia magnussonii, Psorula rufonigra, Rhizocarpon eupetraeum, R. ferax, Rinodina arnoldii, R. endophragmia, R. milvina and R. parasitica. A new combination is made, viz. Coppinsiella alcarum (Poelt) E. S. Hansen et S. Y. Kondr. The type of preferred rocky substrate is noted for all listed lichens. The substrate specificity of the lichens is shortly discussed and outlined.

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Glacier response to the Little Ice Age during the Neoglacial cooling in Greenland

Cited by 33 publications

References 253 publications

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

OSL‐¹⁴C‐¹⁰Be: A novel composite geochronometer for simultaneous quantification of timing and magnitude of change in bedrock outcrop erosion rate

Saxicolous lichens from four localities in South West Greenland

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Glacier response to the Little Ice Age during the Neoglacial cooling in Greenland

Cited by 33 publications

References 253 publications

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

Duration and Ice Thickness of a Late Holocene Outlet Glacier Advance near Narsarsuaq, South Greenland

OSL‐14C‐10Be: A novel composite geochronometer for simultaneous quantification of timing and magnitude of change in bedrock outcrop erosion rate

Saxicolous lichens from four localities in South West Greenland

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OSL‐¹⁴C‐¹⁰Be: A novel composite geochronometer for simultaneous quantification of timing and magnitude of change in bedrock outcrop erosion rate