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Understanding the evolution of debris-covered glaciers in High Mountain Asia, the physical processes governing the effect of debris cover on mass balance, and the response of debris-covered glaciers to climatic change are key for assessing water resources, the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise and the potential for glacier related hazards such as glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) related to moraine-dammed lakes. Here we illustrate the effects of recent glacier recession on the development of landforms and sediments at Ponkar Glacier, a debris-covered glacier in the Manaslu area of the Nepal Himalaya using a combi-nation of 2019 RapidEye satellite image (5 m spatial resolution), drone imagery (50 cm) and field observations. We describe the key features of the glacier and its ice-surface morphology, including size and extent of flow units and tributary glaciers, supraglacial features of the debris cover and vegetation. Geomorphological mapping is used to describe the moraines, proglacial geomorphology, outwash plains and proglacial streams, the development of new ice-marginal ponds and changes in vegetation. Moraines generally have steep and rapidly degrading inner faces and mature vegetation, including trees, on their outer flanks. They are typically com-posed of diamicton and silty or sandy boulder gravel. Large outer moraines are separated from the surrounding val-ley sides by 'ablation valleys'. We conclude by putting the landforms and sediments developed at Ponkar Glacier into a discussion of the likely future evolution of high-eleva-tion debris-covered glaciers

Debris surface temperature is a function of debris characteristics and energy fluxes at the debris surface. However, spatial and temporal variability in debris surface temperature, and the debris properties that control it, are poorly constrained. Here, near-surface debris temperature (T-s) is reported for 16 sites across the lower elevations of Khumbu Glacier, Nepal Himalaya, for the 2014 monsoon season. The debris layer at all sites was 1m thick. We confirm the occurrence of temporal and spatial variability in T-s over a 67-day period and investigate its controls. T-s was found to exhibit marked temporal fluctuations on diurnal, short-term (1-8days) and seasonal timescales. Over the study period, two distinct diurnal patterns in T-s were identified that varied in timing, daily amplitude and maximum temperature; days in the latter half of the study period (after Day of Year 176) exhibited a lower diurnal amplitude (mean = 23 degrees C) and reduced maximum temperatures. Days with lower amplitude and minimum T-s were concurrent with periods of increased seasonal variability in on-glacier air temperature and incoming shortwave radiation, with the increased frequency of these periods attributed to increasing cloud cover as the monsoon progressed. Spatial variability in T-s was manifested in variability of diurnal amplitude and maximum T-s of 7 degrees C to 47 degrees C between sites. Local slope, debris clast size and lithology were identified as the most important drivers of spatial variability in T-s, with inclusion of these three variables in the stepwise general linear models resulting in R-2 0.89 for six out of the seven sites. The complexity of surface energy fluxes and their influence on T-s highlight that assuming a simplified relationship between air temperature and debris surface temperature in glacier melt models, and a direct relationship between debris surface temperature and debris thickness for calculating supraglacial debris thickness, should be undertaken with caution.

The Welsh Ice Cap was a dynamic component of the last British–Irish Ice Sheet at the Last Glacial Maximum, but there are few chronological constraints on the pace and timing of deglaciation. This paper presents new geomorphological and geochronological evidence that constrains the timing of the separation of the Welsh Ice Cap from the Irish Sea Ice Stream and the subsequent deglaciation of south-west Wales; and allow these to be assessed in the context of late Pleistocene climatic events. Luminescence ages from glacial outwash sediments south of Cardigan demonstrate that the Irish Sea Ice Stream was receding by �26.7 ka. The subsequent recession of the Welsh Ice Cap is documented by cosmogenic ages from landforms and sediments in the Aeron and Teifi valleys and upland areas. Deglaciation of the Cambrian Mountains was underway by �19.6 ka. Cross-valley moraines and associated deglaciation deposits show that minor re-advances interrupted the recession of the Aeron Glacier twice, and the Teifi Glacier on at least 12 occasions. By �14.9 ka, the Aeron valley was probably ice-free, but the northwards withdrawal of the Teifi glacier had halted in the Tregaron area. The final rapid recession of this glacier into the uplands of central Wales was completed during the Windermere Interstadial (13.5 cal ka BP) when, in common with much of the UK, the whole of Wales is believed to have become ice-free. There is no evidence that the Cambrian Mountains contained ice-free enclaves at the Last Glacial Maximum, as has been previously suggested. The new ages presented here support suggestions that there was rapid change in the configuration of the Welsh Ice Cap between 20 and 17 ka as upland areas became exposed and there was increasing topographic control on patterns of ice discharge.

Meltwater and runoff from glaciers in High Mountain Asia is a vital freshwater resource for one fifth of the Earth's population. Between 13% and 36% of the region's glacierized areas exhibit surface debris cover and associated supraglacial ponds whose hydrological buffering roles remain unconstrained. We present a high-resolution meltwater hydrograph from the extensively debris-covered Khumbu Glacier, Nepal, spanning a seven-month period in 2014. Supraglacial ponds and accompanying debris cover modulate proglacial discharge by acting as transient and evolving reservoirs. Diurnally, the supraglacial pond system may store >23% of observed mean daily discharge, with mean recession constants ranging from 31 to 108 hours. Given projections of increased debris-cover and supraglacial pond extent across High Mountain Asia, we conclude that runoff regimes may become progressively buffered by the presence of supraglacial reservoirs. Incorporation of these processes is critical to improve predictions of the region's freshwater resource availability and cascading environmental effects downstream.

This paper compiles and reviews marine and terrestrial data constraining the dimensions and configuration of the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet (APIS) from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) through deglaciation to the present day. These data are used to reconstruct grounding-line retreat in 5 ka time-steps from 25 ka BP to present. Glacial landforms and subglacial tills on the eastern and western Antarctic Peninsula (AP) shelf indicate that the APIS was grounded to the outer shelf/shelf edge at the LGM and contained a series of fast-flowing ice streams that drained along cross-shelf bathymetric troughs. The ice sheet was grounded at the shelf edge until ∼20 cal ka BP. Chronological control on retreat is provided by radiocarbon dates on glacimarine sediments from the shelf troughs and on lacustrine and terrestrial organic remains, as well as cosmogenic nuclide dates on erratics and ice moulded bedrock. Retreat in the east was underway by about 18 cal ka BP. The earliest dates on recession in the west are from Bransfield Basin where recession was underway by 17.5 cal ka BP. Ice streams were active during deglaciation at least until the ice sheet had pulled back to the mid-shelf. The timing of initial retreat decreased progressively southwards along the western AP shelf; the large ice stream in Marguerite Trough may have remained grounded at the shelf edge until about 14 cal ka BP, although terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide ages indicate that thinning had commenced by 18 ka BP. Between 15 and 10 cal ka BP the APIS underwent significant recession along the western AP margin, although retreat between individual troughs was asynchronous. Ice in Marguerite Trough may have still been grounded on the mid-shelf at 10 cal ka BP. In the Larsen-A region the transition from grounded to floating ice was established by 10.7–10.6 cal ka BP. The APIS had retreated towards its present configuration in the western AP by the mid-Holocene but on the eastern peninsula may have approached its present configuration several thousand years earlier, by the start of the Holocene. Mid to late-Holocene retreat was diachronous with stillstands, re-advances and changes in ice-shelf configuration being recorded in most places. Subglacial topography exerted a major control on grounding-line retreat with grounding-zone wedges, and thus by inference slow-downs or stillstands in the retreat of the grounding line, occurring in some cases on reverse bed slopes.

Glaciers respond to climate variations and leave geomorphic evidence that represents an important terrestrial paleoclimate record. However, the accuracy of paleoclimate reconstructions from glacial geology is limited by the challenge of representing mountain meteorology in numerical models. Precipitation is usually treated in a simple manner and yet represents difficult-to-characterize variables such as amount, distribution, and phase. Furthermore, precipitation distributions during a glacial probably differed from present-day interglacial patterns. We applied two models to investigate glacier sensitivity to temperature and precipitation in the eastern Southern Alps of New Zealand. A 2-D model was used to quantify variations in the length of the reconstructed glaciers resulting from plausible precipitation distributions compared to variations in length resulting from change in mean annual air temperature and precipitation amount. A 1-D model was used to quantify variations in length resulting from interannual climate variability. Assuming that present-day interglacial values represent precipitation distributions during the last glacial, a range of plausible present-day precipitation distributions resulted in uncertainty in the Last Glacial Maximum length of the Pukaki Glacier of 17.1 km (24%) and the Rakaia Glacier of 9.3 km (25%), corresponding to a 0.5°C difference in temperature. Smaller changes in glacier length resulted from a 50% decrease in precipitation amount from present-day values (−14% and −18%) and from a 50% increase in precipitation amount (5% and 9%). Our results demonstrate that precipitation distribution can produce considerable variation in simulated glacier extents and that reconstructions of paleoglaciers should include this uncertainty.

The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a globally complete collection of digital outlines of glaciers, excluding the ice sheets, developed to meet the needs of the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for estimates of past and future mass balance. The RGI was created with limited resources in a short period. Priority was given to completeness of coverage, but a limited, uniform set of attributes is attached to each of the ~198 000 glaciers in its latest version, 3.2. Satellite imagery from 1999–2010 provided most of the outlines. Their total extent is estimated as 726 800 ± 34 000 km2. The uncertainty, about ±5%, is derived from careful single-glacier and basin-scale uncertainty estimates and comparisons with inventories that were not sources for the RGI. The main contributors to uncertainty are probably misinterpretation of seasonal snow cover and debris cover. These errors appear not to be normally distributed, and quantifying them reliably is an unsolved problem. Combined with digital elevation models, the RGI glacier outlines yield hypsometries that can be combined with atmospheric data or model outputs for analysis of the impacts of climatic change on glaciers. The RGI has already proved its value in the generation of significantly improved aggregate estimates of glacier mass changes and total volume, and thus actual and potential contributions to sea-level rise.

Understanding the timing of past glacial advances in Patagonia is of global climatic importance because of the insight this can provide into the influence on glacier behaviour of changes in temperature and precipitation related to the Southern Westerlies. In this paper we present new luminescence ages determined using single grains of K-feldspar from proglacial outwash sediments that were deposited by the Patagonian Ice Sheet around Lago Buenos Aires (∼46 °S), east of the contemporary Northern Patagonian Icefield. The new luminescence ages indicate that major outwash accumulations formed around ∼110 ± 20 ka to 140 ± 20 ka and that these correspond to the Moreno I and II moraine ridges, which were previously dated using cosmogenic isotope dating to 150 ± 30 ka. Luminescence dating at Lago Buenos Aires has also identified outwash sediments that were deposited during glacial advances ∼30.8 ± 5.7 ka and ∼34.0 ± 6.1 ka (MIS 3) that are not recorded in the moraine record. Younger outwash accumulations were then deposited between ∼14.7 ± 2.1 and 26.2 ± 1.6 ka which correspond to the Fenix I – V moraine ridges. The combined chronology suggests that glacial advances occurred ∼110 ± 20 ka to 150 ± 30 ka (MIS 6), ∼30.8 ± 5.7 ka to ∼34.0 ± 6.1 ka (MIS 3), and ∼14.7 ± 2.1 to 26.2 ± 1.6 ka (MIS 2) at Lago Buenos Aires. Overall luminescence dating using single grains of K-feldspar has excellent potential to contribute towards the ever-increasing geochronological dataset constraining the timings of glacial advances in Patagonia.