Climate change and ‘anomalous' glacier fluctuations: the southwest outlets of Mrdalsjökull, Iceland

• Published in: Boreas
• Main Authors: CASELY, ANDREW F., DUGMORE, ANDREW J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2004
• Subjects: Sólheimajökull; glacier; Ice cap; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1502-3885.2004.tb01133.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1502-3885.2004.tb01133.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1502-3885.2004.tb01133.x

Evidence of past glacier fluctuations is valuable palaeoenvironmental data, but determining their relationship to climatic change is sometimes complex because of differing glacier sensitivities and patterns of response. In Iceland, a diverse range of glaciation creates changing geographical patterns of response to climatic changes. The outlet glaciers of the Márdalsjökull ice cap in southern Iceland have produced detailed, but differing, records of change. For a key southwestern sector of the ice cap, we specifically searched for evidence equivalent to the c . 4500 BP, c . 3100 BP and c . 1200 BP advances of Sólheimajökull reported earlier. A combination of geomorphological mapping and dating by tephrochronology and lichenometry was used to constrain the glacier advances and determine the relative magnitude of Neoglacial glacier episodes. This is a key step towards creating a record of the changes for the entire ice cap. Major glacier advances c . 4500–1000 BP previously identified on the southern margin of Márdalsjökull are shown not to have occurred in this sector, where Neoglacial maxima occur post‐1755 AD.