Late Holocene glaciers in western Scotland?

Abstract

In this paper we use a numerical glacier-climate model, a detailed photogrammetric survey and lichenometry to reconstruct small palaeoglaciers on Ben Nevis and surrounding mountains in western Scotland. These glaciers would have been sustained under a climate where the mean annual air temperature was –1.0°C to –2.0°C compared to present-day values either with or without a decrease in precipitation amount of 10–30%. Historical meteorological data show that these air temperatures were reached on Ben Nevis in the latter part of the 19th century. Although we have no data on the age of these small glaciers, palaeoclimate reconstructions suggest that such conditions almost certainly existed several times during the Holocene in Scotland; the last time being the Little Ice Age of the 16th to 19th Centuries. We argue from this that small Scottish glaciers may have been able to develop in high sheltered cirques at many times during the Holocene and that the glacial history of Scotland therefore requires revision.