Fluctuation history of Midui glacier in the southeastern Tibet since the Little Ice Age(LIA) was reconstructed by the dating of lateral and terminal moraines using tree rings.Four conversions of glacier advance/stabilization to retreat were identified at around 1767,1875,1924 and 1964.The glacier reached its LIA maximum position at 1767.The fluctuations are consistent with those of other glaciers from the Tibetan Plateau,the Rockies and the Alps,suggesting high spatial coherency of glacier fluctuations in the Northern Hemisphere.Comparison with the summer temperature reconstruction in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau indicated that the Midui glacier fluctuation may be related to temperature variation on the centennial timescale.On the decadal scale,the fluctuation could correspond to cold/warm variation with an 8-year lag on average.
High-resolution environmental records from the Tibetan Plateau are essential to understand past global climatic and environmental changes. Magnetic minerals in lake sediments are important proxies to reconstruct environmental and climatic changes. Nam Co (lake) is a typical great lake in the transitional region of southwest monsoon in the Tibetan Plateau. Previous studies have extensively focused on geochemistry, microfossils, sedimentology and biochemistry analysis of Nam Co, which provides sound interpretation of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes. However, up to now, no systematic environmental magnetic studies have been carried out. Therefore, high-resolution and systematic magnetic studies combined with geochemical parameters were carried on lake sediments of core NC 08/01 from Nam Co for the Holocene period (11.3 cal ka BP) in order to explore how magnetic properties of the sediments respond to climatic changes. Based on variations of magnetic proxies, the sequence can be separated into 3 units. Unit 1 (236-199 cm, 11.3-7.8 cal ka BP) contains dominantly coarse-grained magnetite with homogeneous grain size. A positive correlation between magnetite and Ti strongly suggests that these coarse-grained detrital magnetites reflect detrital input signals due to insignificant effects of postdepositional dissolution processes on these coarse-grained magnetite particles. For Unit 2 (198-102 cm, 7.8-2.1 cal ka BP), magnetic grain size is finer and the corresponding concentration of magnetite is also reduced. This is mainly due to significant dissolution of these fine-grained detrital magnetite particles, which were transported under reduced water flow conditions during this period. For Unit 3 (101-0 cm, 2.1-0 cal ka BP), the bulk magnetic properties are dominated by a mixture of single domain biogenic magnetite and detrital magnetite. The concentration of magnetic minerals is not correlated with the Ti content. In conclusion, the preservation of magnetic minerals in the lake sediment and thus the correspondi
Under the background of global warming,some lakes on the Tibetan Plateau(TP) are potentially sensitive to temperature change.With a case study of Pumayum Co,where glacier meltwater is important to supply(we call this a glacier-fed lake hereafter),we analyze the sensitivity of lake sediment grain size to temperature change.This is done by resolving the modern hydrodynamic process,coupled with comparison of paleoclimatic proxies.According to the spatial distributions of parameters,percentage of grain size and the grain size frequency distribution curve,hydrodynamic processes are analyzed.Five clastic sedimentation types are thereby discriminated.In the open lake area,suspended load transport is the main transport agent.Grain Size Trend Analysis(GSTA),a sediment dynamics model,reveals a trend toward eastward transport.This indicates that the largest and glacier-fed river,the Jiaqu River,influences the entire lake(not just the subsurface alluvial fan),and that lake sediment grain size may serve as a temperature indicator.Time series comparison between grain size of a short core from the central lake and meteorological data confirms this temperature indication,which in turn shows reliability of the method discriminating the hydrodynamic process.This case study will improve the ability of paleoclimatic reconstruction using lake sediment in glacier-fed lakes on the Tibetan Plateau.
JU JianTingZHU LiPingFENG JinLiangWANG JunBoWANG YongXIE ManPingPENG PingZHEN XiaoLinLÜXinMiao
