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Heinrich Stadial aridity forced Mediterranean-wide glacier retreat in the last cold stage

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 197–205 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Throughout the last cold stage, the North Atlantic region was punctuated by abrupt climate shifts and atmospheric processes propagated their effects to adjacent continents. During Heinrich Stadials, the ocean was chilled by icebergs calved from the great ice sheets. The impact of multiple temperature and precipitation regime changes on Late Pleistocene mountain glaciers and landscape development is poorly understood. Here we analyse 1,118 cosmogenic exposure ages—spanning the last 100,000 years—from glacial landforms on three continents across the Mediterranean. We evaluate their geomorphological context and stratify the record by depositional setting and geographical region. The database includes 300 dated moraines. We show that, despite cold temperatures, Heinrich Stadial aridity caused negative glacier mass balance and repeatedly stalled glacier growth across the Mediterranean. In contrast, relatively warm and humid climates between Heinrich Stadials favoured positive glacier mass balance, resulting in region-wide glacier growth and moraine formation. Our analysis supports climate model simulations of repeated and widespread Heinrich Stadial aridity in the Mediterranean basin during the last cold stage. Heinrich Stadials also saw enhanced supply of coarse debris from valley sides. The cumulative geomorphological impact of these climate shifts saw the largest moraines form at the culmination of the glacial cycle.

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Fig. 1: Cosmogenic exposure ages for glacial landforms across the Mediterranean.
Fig. 2: The location of dated glacial records and long proxy climate records in the Mediterranean.
Fig. 3: Mediterranean glacial and Northern Hemisphere proxy climate records for the past 100,000 yr.

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Data availability

The TCN database on which this paper is based is provided in full in Supplementary Table 1. Basemap data were downloaded from https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/.

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Acknowledgements

During this work, J.L.A. was in receipt of a School of Environment Education and Development (SEED) PhD Studentship in the Department of Geography at The University of Manchester.

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  1. Department of Geography, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    James L. Allard, Philip D. Hughes & Jamie C. Woodward

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J.L.A., P.D.H. and J.C.W.: manuscript conceptualization, methodology, writing original draft, writing review and editing; J.L.A.: data curation and analysis. All authors reviewed and edited the drafts of the paper.

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Correspondence to James L. Allard, Philip D. Hughes or Jamie C. Woodward.

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Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Maria-Fernanda Sanchez-Goñi, Patrick Ludwig and Marc Oliva for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: James Super.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Trends of publications and published TCN dates over time.

Cumulative frequency plot of (a) publications presenting cosmogenic nuclide exposure ages for Mediterranean glaciated landscapes and (b) the total number of cosmogenic ages (0–100 ka). Continuous lines represent reliable ages that exclude author identified outliers. Dashed lines represent total ages and include author identified outliers. The data here are compiled from published sources in the database62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,118,119 (Supplementary Table 1). Note that some publications in the database use both isotopes.

Supplementary information

41561_2021_703_MOESM1_ESM.xls

Supplementary Information Supplementary Table 1 This spreadsheet contains all 1,118 recalculated terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) ages from the Mediterranean Mountains included in this analysis. This spreadsheet also contains details of the 300 moraines included in this analysis and the TCN data required for exposure age calculations.

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Allard, J.L., Hughes, P.D. & Woodward, J.C. Heinrich Stadial aridity forced Mediterranean-wide glacier retreat in the last cold stage. Nat. Geosci. 14, 197–205 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00703-6

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