Little Ice Age glaciers in the Balkans: low altitude glaciation enabled by cooler temperatures and local topoclimatic controls

Abstract

Moraine ridges are present in the highest cirques of the Durmitor massif in Montenegro and post-date the widespread Pleistocene moraines of this area. Lichenometry suggests that at least eight glaciers were present in the 19th century and correlate with the culmination of the Little Ice Age in the European Alps. Cooler temperatures combined with local topoclimatic controls, including windblown and avalanching snow as well as shading, were crucial for the formation and survival of these glaciers below the regional equilibrium-line altitude. The resultant regional equilibrium line altitude (ELA) was positioned close to the highest peaks between 2400 and 2500 m, with local controls such as avalanche, windblown snow and shading depressing the ELA in the northern cirques to 2130-2210 m. This ELA position was very low for this latitude and lower than for most glaciers in the European Alps at any time during the Holocene, and even equivalent to many Alpine glaciers during the Younger Dryas. Today, one glacier still survives in Montenegro, in a deep northeast-facing cirque characterized by the largest combined areas of potential avalanche and windblown snow.

A multi-proxy perspective on millennium-long climate variability in the Southern Pyrenees

“…Cacho et al, 2010, and references therein). Glacier maximum development in both northern and southern slopes coincides with this coldest and most humid period of the LIA in the Southern Pyrenees (1600-1800 AD) and displays a similar pattern compared to other Mediterranean mountains, like the Apennines (Giraudi, 2005) and the Balkans (Hughes, 2010). At lower timescales, some of the relative maxima in precipitation recorded in the Capdella tree-ring rainfall reconstruction during the last ca.…”

“…3). Glacier readvances in the Pyrenees occurred between the last decades of the late 19th century and the 1920s (González Trueba et al, 2008) and have also been documented in other Mediterranean areas, like the Apennines (Giraudi, 2005), the Balkans (Hughes, 2010), Sierra Nevada (Gómez Ortiz et al, 2002, 2009), or the Cantabrian Mountains (González-Trueba, 2006Serrano et al, 2011). Interestingly, this episode correlates with lower winter temperatures at Lake Redon (Pla and Catalán, 2005), a relative maximum in precipitation recorded in Capdella and a relative temperature minima in the GER-SOB records (Fig.…”

“…The occurrence of predominantly humid conditions during the LIA has been widely detected elsewhere in the IP : (i) higher lake levels were reconstructed in the north (e.g. La Cruz Lake, Iberian Range (Julià et al, 1998)) and in the south of Spain (Martín-Puertas et al, 2008, 2010, (ii) increased continental runoff reconstructed from marine sequences (e.g. Nieto- Moreno et al, 2011), (iii) increased Westerlies in the W Mediterranean , (iv) increased storm activity in the nearby French Mediterranean Coast (Dezileau et al, 2011) and (v) more frequent floods in the Tagus headwaters Benito et al, 2003).…”

“…Glaciers in Mediterranean mountains are characterized by a high sensitivity to climate variability (Hughes, 2010), but the relatively short time span of the Pyrenean records (from ca. 1600 AD to the present) and their relatively lower chronological resolution are major shortcomings when comparing to other records.…”

Quaternary Glaciations of the Atlas Mountains, North Africa

“…The size and nature of this feature in recent centuries is also unclear and it would not be implausible to hypothesise the presence of small niche glaciers at this site and others around the High Atlas during the 'Little Ice Age', as has been found in other mountains around the Mediterranean basin (e.g. González Trueba et al, 2008;Hughes, 2010).…”