Interstadial rise and Younger Dryas demise of Scotland's last ice fields

• Main Authors: Bromley, Gordon R.M., Putnam, Aaron E., Borns Jr, H., Lowell, T., Sandford, T., Barrell, D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Geophysical Union 2018
• Subjects: Abrupt climate change; Younger Dryas; glacial geology; Scotland; seasonality; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10379/14775; https://doi.org/10.13025/19805; https://doi.org/10.1002/2018PA003341

Establishing the atmospheric expression of abrupt climate change during the last glacial termination is key to understanding driving mechanisms. In this paper, we present a new 14C chronology of glacier behavior during late-glacial time from the Scottish Highlands, located close to the overturning region of the North Atlantic Ocean. Our results indicate that the last pulse of glaciation culminated between ~12.8 and ~12.6 ka, during the earliest part of the Younger Dryas stadial and as much as a millennium earlier than several recent estimates. Comparison of our results with existing minimum-limiting 14C data also suggests that the subsequent deglaciation of Scotland was rapid and occurred during full stadial conditions in the North Atlantic. We attribute this pattern of ice recession to enhanced summertime melting, despite severely cool winters, and propose that relatively warm summers are a fundamental characteristic of North Atlantic stadials. his work was supported by NSF grant EAR‐9118375 and National Geographic/WAITT Foundation grant 450‐16. A.E. Putnam acknowledges support from the Comer Family Foundation, the Lenfest Foundation, a Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory postdoctoral fellowship, and NSF grant EAR‐1554990. The data reported and discussed in this paper are listed in the references, tables, and supporting information. peer-reviewed