Holocene and latest Pleistocene alpine glacier fluctuations in the high mountains of East Asia
The timing and extent of Holocene and latest Pleistocene alpine glacier fluctuations in the high mountains of East Asia is poorly defined. This is partially due to the logistical and political inaccessibility of the region, and the lack of modern studies of the glacial successions. In recent years, however, renewed interest in the region, especially with the aid of new remote sensing technologies and newly developing dating techniques, such as optically stimulated luminescence and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) surface exposure dating, have provided new insights into the nature of latest Quaternary glacial oscillations. The best studied and preserved glacial successions are present in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan, the massifs of Muztag Ata and Kongur Shan in westernmost Tibet, the Greater Himalaya of Northern India, and the valleys on the southern and northern slopes of Mount Everest. These regions, together with other regions throughout the Himalaya and Tibet, provide abundant evidence for significant glacial advances during the Lateglacial Interstadial and the early Holocene. Furthermore, there is evidence for multiple glacial advances throughout the latter part of the Holocene, although these are generally very poorly defined. The best defined Holocene glacier advances are in Muztag Ata and Kongur Shan massifs. Here glacial advances occurred at approximately 16 ka, 13 ka, 10.6 ka, 9.6 ka, 8.0 ka, 6.3 ka, 4.2 ka, 3.5 ka, 1.5 ka and few hundred years before the present. The new studies through East Asia suggest that since the Last Glacial Maximum, the glaciers in East Asia have responded to oscillations in south Asia monsoon that are forced by insolation changes, and climate changes resulting from teleconnections with rapid climate oscillations in the Northern Hemisphere oceans and ice sheets. Continued research on late Holocene glacier advances in northern India using TCNs, dendrochronology and lichenometry will refine the chronologies to aid in identifying the forcing factors of glaciation in East Asia.