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flugeryl


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11th Mar 2021
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Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 12.42hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
[www.thecourier.co.uk]

intresting wee read

Be Nice to Skiers, they have it hard enough already

PeterS


Posts: 980
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13th Mar 2021
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Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 13.00hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
'Dr Everest said....'


Do you think people deliberately choose careers based on their names smiling smiley

alan


Posts: 10768
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27th Mar 2024
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Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 13.27hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
Sugden was amongst those who've in the past proposed that glaciers were active on CairnGorm and Braeriach during the little ice age, possibly as late as the 1800s.

Previous attempts at dating the 'moraines' in question since Sugden's work in the 1970s has generally agreed on a figure of older than 6000years, though certainly Sugden's work suggests the long lying semi permanent snowfields were much more extensive than in the past century.

That apparently glacial features have been dated to a much more recent period of time is certainly interesting, but the question is are they genuine moraines or is it more likely that they are protalus ramparts?



Dr Adam Watson's 2012 book 'A Snow Book, Northern Scotland' looks at the issue of whether glaciers existed in the Cairngorms in the 18th and 19th centuries in chapter 6 - but concludes that it's highly unlikely.

Some of this Chapter is available on google: [books.google.co.uk]

Perhaps it comes back in part to the previously discussed issue of when does a persistent neve patch progress from snow patch to glacier?

The full book is available on Amazon:

A Snow Book, Northern Scotland



Edited 2 times. Last edit at 13.35hrs Tue 21 Jan 14 by alan.

David Goldsmith


Posts: 1283
Joined: Feb 2003
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6th Nov 2018
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 14.18hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
Very interesting. In London we think nostalgically of the Frost Fairs - freezing over of the Thames for a few days, with associated celebrations, food stalls, performers, souvenir sellers ... on the ice.

The last one was 1814, but then London Bridge was rebuilt with wider arches that allowed the river's tides to rise and fall more naturally. Before that, the river above the bridge was more sluggish.

Looking back to the previous 'real' ice age (c.10,000 years ago?) ... terminal moraine of the great ice sheets exists in north London. Coldfall Wood (great name) - a couple of miles east of where I'm typing this - is one location ...

[en.wikipedia.org]

My bet is that evidence of glaciation in the Highlands during the Little Ice Age won't be found - the fall in temperatures during that 300-year period wasn't massive. However, it wouldn't be a large and confident bet.

edog2009


Posts: 146
Joined: May 2009
Last Visited: 08:15
24th Jul 2017
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 14.30hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
Myself and Iain Cameron (Firefly) have been discussing this recent research in some detail, maybe I'll leave it to him to make a comment here, but I think basically our response is along similar lines to Alan's above...

David Goldsmith


Posts: 1283
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6th Nov 2018
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 17.49hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
BBC report:

Scotland had a glacier up to 1700s, say scientists
[www.bbc.co.uk]

moffatross


Posts: 1525
Joined: Mar 2006
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 18.53hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
Our potential to return to Maunder Minimum type conditions were being discussed by weather geeks in 2009 when we were still in the midst of an unusually protracted solar minimum. Research climatologists are taking that idea quite seriously now and extrapolating the small possibility of similar conditions returning within about 40 years. Helen, you could eventually have glacier skiing for a fall-back plan. smiling smiley

[www.bbc.co.uk]

h11lly


Posts: 2150
Joined: Dec 2002
Last Visited: 18:38
2nd Sep 2019
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Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 20.22hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
40 years Ross ! I'll be skiing in the clouds long before then winking smiley



Helen

Hustler


Posts: 760
Joined: Oct 2006
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19th Aug 2019
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 22.10hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
Helen, I thought you are quite often to be found skiing up in the clouds...


firefly


Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 22.49hrs on Tue 21 Jan 14
As I see it, the issue in Harrison et al's paper with regards Garbh Choire Mòr is that no corroborative fieldwork was conducted. To prove the claim that the boulder ridge is, in fact, a moraine, requires analysis of the soil. They state that the boulder ridge is 'too far from the foot of the talus slope at the backwall of the cirque for it to have formed by pronival processes'. This is false. Avalanche debris is well known to reach this ridge frequently, and pictures on my archive demonstrate this to be true, as well as eye-witness testimony from Adam Watson. This is a fundamental and fatal flaw in their argument. To dismiss the ridge as being a pro talus rampart requires hypothesis testing by them. So far as I can establish, this didn't happen. To claim that there was a glacier in GCM during the last few hundred years, without actually going there to test the hypothesis, is not scientifically sound.

I'm pretty certain there were no glaciers in the Cairngorms at this time, and the paper published (and reported in the media) doesn't seem to me to be at all convincing or credible.

firefly


Posts: 2149
Joined: May 2006
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 14.48hrs on Wed 22 Jan 14
edog2009


Posts: 146
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Last Visited: 08:15
24th Jul 2017
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 16.53hrs on Wed 22 Jan 14
Martin Kirkbride has replied to Adam's comments on the MCofS website news:

[www.mcofs.org.uk]

SimonW


Posts: 17
Joined: Nov 2010
Last Visited: 10:57
24th Oct 2016
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 20.10hrs on Fri 24 Jan 14
Where in the coire was this supposed glacier? Can anyone shade in a map to show its extent?

edog2009


Posts: 146
Joined: May 2009
Last Visited: 08:15
24th Jul 2017
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 21.09hrs on Fri 24 Jan 14
The glacier that everyone is discussing is proposed in a research paper by Dr Martin Kirkbride of the University of Dundee (and others). The location is Coire an Lochain, one of the northern corries of the Cairn Gorm plateau. It is proposed that it is a 'late Holocene' glacier, i.e. it existed within the last few hundred years (during the Little Ice Age), and it is even claimed it may have lasted until the mid 19th Century.

I've attached an image which shows the proposed extent of the glacier. This is strictly my interpretation of the maps in the research paper, and is not a direct copy of the maps contained in the paper.

Dr Stefan Harrison of the University of Exeter (and others) has also proposed a 'late Holocene' glacier in Garbh Choire Mòr of Braeriach.

Attachments: cal1.jpg (416kB)  
Owen


Posts: 45
Joined: Nov 2011
Last Visited: 11:05
12th Mar 2021
Re: Scotlands last glacier....18th Century
Date Posted: 22.38hrs on Fri 24 Jan 14
What do you class as "Late Holocene"?

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