The clusted rhythm of glacial erosion

The most prominent aspects of editors are summaries of recent documents of AGU magazine editors.

Fountain: Geophysical Research Magazine: Earth surface

Increases in global erosion rates in the last million years have been related to the long -term cooling of the earth’s climate, but this relationship is complicated by biases in sedimentary records. Glaciers, which are highly efficient erosion agents in polar landscapes and great altitude, are particularly sensitive to climate change. Short -term glacial erosion rates are often much higher than long -term rates due to processes such as glacial withdrawal, basal sliding and increase. This bias that promotes time often confuses the interpretations of long -term trends in the evolution of the landscape.

Fedotova and Magnani [2024] Investigate glacial erosion in Lago Argentino, a proglacial basin that receives sediments from the ice field in southern Patagonia. By combining core sedimentation rate data with images of seismic reflection of layers of sediments, they calculate erosion rates in the last 20,000 years. His findings show that glacial erosion was intermittent, which occurs in different pulses separated by periods of quiescence. When compiling global glacial erosion rate, authors show that rates averaged in decadal time scales seem much higher than averaged rates for billions of time scales. These results emphasize the importance of taking into account the biases that promote time in erosion rate studies to better interpret the evolution of the landscape and climate change on the history of the earth.

Appointment: Fedotova, A. and Magnani, MB (2024). Glacial erosion rates since the last glacial maximum for the old Argentine glacier and the current Upsala glacier, Patagonia. Geophysical Research Magazine: Earth surface129, E2024JF007960. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JF007960

—Marisa Revlasch, associated editor, JGR: Earth surface

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