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Expansion of alpine glaciers in Pacific North America in the first millennium A.D.

¹ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E3, Canada
² Department of Geology, The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio 44691, USA
³ University of Victoria Tree-Ring Laboratory, Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P5, Canada
⁴ Department of Geology, State University of New York, Cortland, New York 13045, USA
⁵ University of Victoria Tree-Ring Laboratory, Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3P5, Canada
⁶ Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
⁷ Department of Earth Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada

Radiocarbon ages and lichen-dated moraines from 17 glaciers in coastal and near- coastal British Columbia and Alaska document a widespread glacier advance during the first millennium A.D. Glaciers at several sites began advancing ca. A.D. 200–300 based on radiocarbon-dated overridden forests. The advance is centered on A.D. 400–700, when glaciers along an 2000 km transect of the Pacific North American cordillera overrode forests, impounded lakes, and deposited moraines. The synchroneity of this glacier advance and inferred cooling over a large area suggest a regional climate forcing and, together with other proxy evidence for late Holocene environmental change during the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, provide support for millennial-scale climate variability in the North Pacific region.

Key Words: Alaska • British Columbia • glacier • Holocene • neoglaciation • paleoclimate

This article has been cited by other articles:

				B. Stenni, L. Genoni, O. Flora, and M. Guglielmin An oxygen isotope record from the Foscagno rock-glacier ice core, Upper Valtellina, Italian Central Alps The Holocene, November 1, 2007; 17(7): 1033 - 1039. [Abstract] [PDF]