Arctic glaciers and ice caps through the Holocene:a circumpolar synthesis of lake-based reconstructions

• Published in: Climate of the Past
• Main Authors: L. J. Larocca, Y. Axford
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2022
• Subjects: Environmental pollution; TD172-193.5; Environmental protection; TD169-171.8; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Arctic; Baffin Island; Canada; Greenland; Svalbard; Baffin; Climate change; glacier; glacier*; glaciers; Iceland; Alaska
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-579-2022; https://doaj.org/article/a525f6e031cd4b84b61532354a21a139

The recent retreat of nearly all glaciers and ice caps (GICs) located in Arctic regions is one of the most clear and visible signs of ongoing climate change. This paper synthesizes published records of Holocene GIC fluctuations from lake archives, placing their recent retreat into a longer-term context. Our compilation includes 66 lake-based GIC records (plus one non-lake-based record from the Russian Arctic) from seven Arctic regions: Alaska, Baffin Island in northeastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Scandinavian peninsula, Svalbard, and the Russian high Arctic. For each region and for the full Arctic, we summarize evidence for when GICs were smaller than today or absent altogether, indicating warmer-than-present summers, and evidence for when GICs regrew in lake catchments, indicating summer cooling. Consistent with orbitally driven high boreal summer insolation in the early Holocene, the full Arctic compilation suggests that the majority (50 % or more) of studied GICs were smaller than present or absent by ∼10 ka. We find the highest percentage ( >90 %) of Arctic GICs smaller than present or absent in the middle Holocene at ∼ 7–6 ka, probably reflecting more spatially ubiquitous and consistent summer warmth during this period than in the early Holocene. Following this interval of widespread warmth, our compilation shows that GICs across the Arctic began to regrow and summers began to cool by ∼6 ka. Together, the Arctic records also suggest two periods of enhanced GIC growth in the middle to late Holocene from ∼ 4.5–3 and after ∼2 ka. The regional records show variability in the timing of GIC regrowth within and between regions, suggesting that the Arctic did not cool synchronously despite the smooth and hemispherically symmetric decline in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. In agreement with other studies, this implies a combined response to glacier-specific characteristics such as topography and to other climatic forcings and feedback mechanisms, perhaps driving periods of increased regional ...