Evolution of Glacier Snowline Since the End of the Last Ice Age in New Zealand

An important problem in paleoclimatology is how Southern Hemisphere climate changed since the end of the last ice age. The terrestrial glacier record reflects past snowline (=equilibrium line altitude) variability and is one of the few direct proxies available, in the middle latitudes, of former atmospheric properties. We reconstruct changes in snowline since ~15 ka on the South Island of New Zealand using geomorphologic mapping, ¹⁰Be surface-exposure dating, accumulation-area ratio (AAR) methods and numerical modeling. The snowline data are a proxy for the 0°C atmospheric isotherm, which occurs above 1500 m asl in the central Southern Alps, and trends in temperature since ~15 ka. Our findings show that snowline was depressed during the Antarctic Cold Reversal. Subsequently, snowline rose ~100 m during the Younger Dryas stadial in Europe. These late glacial changes appear coherent across the southern middle latitudes. In the early Holocene, snowline was depressed >200 m relative to modern in the Southern Alps. Between 11 ka and 600 years ago, short-term oscillations punctuated a multi-millennia trend of decreasing glacier extent as snowline rose ~100 m. Since ~600 yrs ago, net snowline has continued progressively to rise. The record implies long-term warming in New Zealand since the Late Glacial period. During the Holocene, the lowest snowlines and most extensive glaciers occurred in the early part of the epoch. Snowline reconstruction and numerical modeling allow us to estimate that temperature depression during the Late Glacial was ~2.1±0.4°C (relative to modern) and increased about 0.6 to 1°C between the early and late Holocene. Our terrestrial glacier and snowline records show coherence and also they are consistent with marine records in the Australian sector, documenting a regional climate pattern. However, the climate of the southwest Pacific region was fundamentally different from that observed in the Northern Hemisphere, where the most extensive Holocene glaciers occurred during the European Little Ice Age period.