Glaciers offer the potential to reconstruct past climate over timescales from decades to millennia. They are found on nearly every continent, and at the Last Glacial Maximum, glaciers were larger in all regions on Earth. The physics of glacier-climate interaction are relatively well understood, and glacier models can be used to reconstruct past climate from geological evidence of past glacier extent. This can lead to significant insights regarding past, present, and future climate. For example, glacier modeling has demonstrated that the near-ubiquitous global pattern of glacier retreat during the last few centuries resulted from a global-scale climate warming of ∼1°C, consistent with instrumental data and climate proxy records. Climate reconstructions from glaciers have also demonstrated that the tropics were colder at the Last Glacial Maximum than was originally inferred from sea surface temperature reconstructions. Future efforts to reconstruct climate from glaciers may provide new constraints on climat...

中文翻译：

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从冰川重建气候

冰川提供了在几十年到几千年的时间尺度上重建过去气候的潜力。它们几乎在每个大陆都有发现，在末次盛冰期，地球上所有地区的冰川都更大。冰川-气候相互作用的物理学相对比较好理解，冰川模型可用于根据过去冰川范围的地质证据重建过去的气候。这可以导致对过去、现在和未来气候的重要见解。例如，冰川建模表明，过去几个世纪几乎无处不在的全球冰川退缩模式是全球尺度气候变暖约 1°C 造成的，这与仪器数据和气候代理记录一致。冰川的气候重建也表明，末次盛冰期的热带地区比最初从海面温度重建中推断出的要冷。未来从冰川重建气候的努力可能会对气候产生新的限制...