(C)old.Ice- Insights into late Holocene Alpine climate

This projects contributes to global efforts by providing new climate information extracted from ice cores in the Eastern Alps. Here we observe one of the most extensive deglaciation processes on the globe which threatens the ice archives containing records of the last 6 millennia. Extreme melt events and warm periods can be identified by radiometric dating of the various annual layers in the core. In this way we can find out how unique and extreme the current conditions are in comparison with the past. Warm periods and extreme melt events as associated with the anthropogenic warming; extreme ice losses of the last two decades will be very likely the most prominent features in the record. Ice enclosures like Sahara dust point out past weather patterns and help us understand changes in northern hemispherical climate patterns. In addition to that, the novel method of pollen analysis in ice sharpens the dating of the core and at the same time hints at human activities in the Eastern Alps. In recent projects we drilled the first ice core in the Austrian Eastern Alps to the ground at Weißseespitze in Kaunertal (3500 m), found out that the lowest ice roughly corresponds to the period of Ötzi the ice man. Complementary to this core, we will drill ice cores from a site at the same elevation as Weißseespitze, but with different precipitation (Sonklarspitze, Stubai Alps, 3463 m), and fill elevation gaps in the Alpine records with cores from Großvenediger, Hohe Tauern (3666 m) and Jamtalferner, Silvretta, (3099 m). Two samples from basal ice layers/ground from two disappearing glaciers will reveal any possible facts behind the fairy tales of advancing Alpine glaciers.

The project (C)old Ice - Insights into the Late Holocene Climate has confirmed that environmental archives spanning at least 6,000 years are preserved within summit ice caps that are frozen to the underlying bedrock. The age of the ice at Weißseespitze is similar at other sites at comparable elevations, such as Sonklarspitze in the Stubai Alps. Initial analyses have also demonstrated the preservation of environmental DNA (eDNA) within the ice, opening up the possibility of investigating whether past ecosystem changes can be reconstructed by combining the age structure established in this project with corresponding climatic conditions. The significant ice loss observed during the course of the project highlights how exceptional the current melting is when compared to climatic conditions over the past 6,000 years. Glacier and climate monitoring on one of Austria's highest glaciated summits provides a unique link between the present and the past. Soil samples collected from areas that have recently become ice-free revealed evidence of different phases of vegetation development. This allows warm and cold periods previously identified through dendrochronological findings from glacier forefields to be extrapolated to higher elevations and complemented by evidence from periods of minimum glacier extent, particularly at Jamtalferner and the Übergossene Alm. In addition to the already available ice core from Weißseespitze (3,500 m) in the Kaunertal Valley of Tyrol, this project recovered and dated ice cores from sites with differing precipitation regimes, including Sonklarspitze (3,463 m), as well as from different elevations at Großvenediger (3,666 m) and Jamtalferner (3,099 m). These results confirmed the theory developed at Weißseespitze regarding the relationship between elevation and glaciation. Basal ice and stagnant ice remnants from glaciers that are currently disappearing, such as those at the Übergossene Alm, were sampled and dated. Organic material found beneath the former glacier records the timing of ice formation and the cessation of vegetation growth. Traditional legends concerning the origin of glaciers in the Alps were also examined for their factual basis and placed within a chronological framework-before the cold summit ice caps, as silent witnesses of climate change, disappear completely through melting.