Rowan, A.V. orcid.org/0000-0002-3715-5554, Egholm, D.L. and Clark, C.D. orcid.org/0000-0002-1021-6679 (2022) Forward modelling of the completeness and preservation of palaeoclimate signals recorded by ice‐marginal moraines. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 47 (9). pp. 2198-2208. ISSN 0197-9337
Abstract
Glaciers fluctuate in response to climate change and record these changes by building sedimentary landforms, including moraines. Therefore, glacial landscapes are a potentially valuable archive of terrestrial palaeoclimate change. Typically, a cooling climate causes glaciers to expand and a warming climate causes glaciers to shrink. However, the glacier response time and the influence of mountainous topography on glacier dynamics complicates this behaviour, such that moraines are not always a straightforward indicator of glacier change in response to climate change. We used a glacial landscape evolution model to simulate the response of a hypothetical mountain glacier to simple changes in climate and the resulting formation and preservation of moraines. These results show that the rate of climate change relative to the glacier response time determines the geometry, number, and position of moraines. Glaciers can build distinct moraines in the absence of climate change. The distance from the maximum ice extent may not represent the chronological order of moraine formation. Moraines can be preserved after being overrun and eroded by subsequent glaciations, but moraine sequences may also contain gaps that are unidentifiable in the field.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | glacial landscape evolution; moraine; mountain glaciers; palaeoclimate; Quaternary geology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 28 Apr 2022 11:21 |
Last Modified: | 24 Nov 2022 15:50 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/esp.5371 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:186093 |