High elevation ice patch documents Holocene climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains

Chellman, Nathan; Pederson, Gregory T.; Lee, Craig M.; McWethy, David B.; Puseman, Kathryn; Stone, Jeffery R.; Brown, Sabrina R.; McConnell, Joseph R.

doi:10.1016/j.qsa.2020.100021

“…In the middle and late Holocene, summers on the Yellowstone Plateau became cooler and effectively wetter due to declining summer insolation and the attendant weakening of the northeastern Pacific subtropical high, leading to the establishment of present climate conditions (Whitlock and Bartlein, 1993;Bartlein et al, 1998). Paleoclimate reconstructions from the Yellowstone National Park vicinity corroborate a story of warm, dry conditions in the early Holocene that became increasingly cool and wet to the present (Larsen et al, 2020;Chellman et al, 2021).…”

Section: Holocene Climate Context On the Yellowstone Plateaumentioning

confidence: 60%

“…For example, Old Faithful Geyser ceased to erupt during a multidecadal drought in the Medieval Climate Anomaly (Hurwitz et al, 2020), so a loss of effective moisture might have altered LGB hydrothermal activity similarly. However, the gradual increase in effective moisture in the late Holocene (Larsen et al, 2020;Chellman et al, 2021) seems inconsistent with abrupt reorganization of the LGB hydrothermal system. Reduced precipitation, however, would have altered the subsurface water supply of LGB, and may have resulted in a reorganization of its hydrothermal activity, including cessation of hydrothermal activity at Goose Lake.…”

Section: Holocene Climate Context On the Yellowstone Plateaumentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This change may have been caused by abrupt drought conditions correlated with the 4.2 ka climate event, a multidecadal period of severe drought in North America (Booth et al, 2005;Lundeen et al, 2013;Carter et al, 2018) and much of the Northern Hemisphere (Railsback et al, 2018). An ice core described from the Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone National Park indicated a period of anomalous, warmer winter-season temperatures between 4200 cal yr BP and 3800 cal yr BP (Chellman et al, 2021), which may have led to drier conditions in the region. In any case, there has been difficulty in attributing the cause of changes to modern hydrothermal features (e.g., Reed et al, 2021), which cautions against hasty, causal attribution of such changes, particularly in the deep past.…”

Section: Holocene Climate Context On the Yellowstone Plateaumentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Holocene geo-ecological evolution of Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park (USA)

Schiller

¹

,

Whitlock

²

,

Brown

³

2021

Self Cite

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Changes in climate and fire regime have long been recognized as drivers of the postglacial vegetation history of Yellowstone National Park, but the effects of locally dramatic hydrothermal activity are poorly known. Multi-proxy records from Goose Lake have been used to describe the history of Lower Geyser Basin where modern hydrothermal activity is widespread. From 10,300 cal yr BP to 3800 cal yr BP, thermal waters discharged into the lake, as evidenced by the deposition of arsenic-rich sediment, fluorite mud, and relatively high δ13Csediment values. Partially thermal conditions affected the limnobiotic composition, but prevailing climate, fire regime, and rhyolitic substrate maintained Pinus contorta forest in the basin, as found throughout the region. At 3800 cal yr BP, thermal water discharge into Goose Lake ceased, as evidenced by a shift in sediment geochemistry and limnobiota. Pollen and charcoal data indicate concurrent grassland development with limited fuel biomass and less fire activity, despite late Holocene climate conditions that were conducive to expanded forest cover. The shift in hydrothermal activity at Goose Lake and establishment of the treeless geyser basin may have been the result of a tectonic event or change in hydroclimate. This record illustrates the complex interactions of geology and climate that govern the development of an active hydrothermal geo-ecosystem.

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“…Examples span many frozen archives: Recent polar and high‐alpine ice core studies integrate several disciplines to study past climate, land use, and pollution (e.g., Brugger et al., 2021; Hartmann et al., 2019; McConnell et al., 2018). Ice caves were successfully used to reconstruct Holocene treelines in the Pyrenees (Spain) thus bridging the cryosphere to the biosphere (Leunda et al., 2019), while the investigation of ice patches enables scientists to link past climate to archeology (e.g., Chellman et al., 2021; Pilø et al., 2021). A modern example of how cryosphere science is connected to environmental impacts on society, are the devastating Portugal fires in 2017 and the associated smoke plume that was traced to snow in the Swiss Alps using a combination of satellite images, atmospheric trajectories, and traditional black carbon and microfossil measurements in a snow pit (Osmont et al., 2020).…”

Section: Observational and Modeling Data Research And Application In ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cryosphere Sciences Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

Brugger

¹

,

Jimenez

²

,

Ponsoni

³

et al. 2022

Earth and Space Science

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Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) science aims to enhance synthesis, increase resource efficiency, and create transferable knowledge (Goldman et al., 2021). This article belongs to a collection of commentaries spanning geoscience on the state and future of ICON science. For a deeper understanding of the ICON principles, see the introductory article for the collection. ICON-Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) expands upon "Open" to explicitly point to the FAIR data principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016).The cryosphere is one of the five major components of the global climate system along with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere (IPCC, 2019). Its terminology originates from the Greek word "krios" (κρύος) meaning cold, while in science it encompasses any discipline related to water in a frozen state, whether seasonal or perennial (NOAA, 2021). These include sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow, ice sheets, ice shelves, glaciers, freshwater ice, and frozen ground (AGU, 2021b; IPCC, 2019). Hence, cryosphere research is a field built around a common archive (ice) that embraces a variety of different research questions across spatial scales, time frames from modern to deep time, and is integrated (I-integrated) between traditional disciplines (i.e., physical, chemical, and biological). For example, in collected ice cores, a variety of measurements from physical properties, chemical species, and biological specimens, as well as atmospheric and ice flow modeling branch into other subdisciplines and require an assessment through integrated multidisciplinary approaches including natural and social sciences (e.g., McConnell et al., 2020;Richter-Menge et al., 2019).Due to recent climate change-forced phenomena, such as glacier retreats (e.g.,

show abstract

“…Examples span many frozen archives: Recent polar and high-alpine ice core studies integrate several disciplines to study past climate, land use, and pollution (e.g., Brugger et al, 2021;Hartmann et al, 2019;McConnell et al, 2018). Ice caves were successfully used to reconstruct Holocene treelines in the Pyrenees (Spain) thus bridging the cryosphere to the biosphere (Leunda et al, 2019), while the investigation of ice patches enables scientists to link past climate to archeology (e.g., Chellman et al, 2021;Pilø et al, 2021). A modern example of how cryosphere science is connected to environmental impacts on society, are the devastating Portugal fires in 2017 and the associated smoke plume that was traced to snow in the Swiss Alps using a combination of satellite images, atmospheric trajectories, and traditional black carbon and microfossil measurements in a snow pit (Osmont et al, 2020).…”

Section: Observational and Modeling Data Research And Application In ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cryosphere Sciences Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

Graham¹,

Hannides²,

Mamnun³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) science aims to enhance synthesis, increase resource efficiency, and create transferable knowledge (Goldman et al., 2021). This article belongs to a collection of commentaries spanning geoscience on the state and future of ICON science. For a deeper understanding of the ICON principles, see the introductory article for the collection. ICON-Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) expands upon "Open" to explicitly point to the FAIR data principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016).The cryosphere is one of the five major components of the global climate system along with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere (IPCC, 2019). Its terminology originates from the Greek word "krios" (κρύος) meaning cold, while in science it encompasses any discipline related to water in a frozen state, whether seasonal or perennial (NOAA, 2021). These include sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow, ice sheets, ice shelves, glaciers, freshwater ice, and frozen ground (AGU, 2021b; IPCC, 2019). Hence, cryosphere research is a field built around a common archive (ice) that embraces a variety of different research questions across spatial scales, time frames from modern to deep time, and is integrated (I-integrated) between traditional disciplines (i.e., physical, chemical, and biological). For example, in collected ice cores, a variety of measurements from physical properties, chemical species, and biological specimens, as well as atmospheric and ice flow modeling branch into other subdisciplines and require an assessment through integrated multidisciplinary approaches including natural and social sciences (e.g., McConnell et al., 2020;Richter-Menge et al., 2019).Due to recent climate change-forced phenomena, such as glacier retreats (e.g.,

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High elevation ice patch documents Holocene climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains

Cited by 15 publications

References 49 publications

Holocene geo-ecological evolution of Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park (USA)

Holocene geo-ecological evolution of Lower Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park (USA)

Cryosphere Sciences Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

Cryosphere Sciences Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

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