Trees under retreating glaciers

[vivesdn]

Three years ago, I spend some days on the Swiss Alps.
All the glaciers we visited were in clear recession. Ok, this is a global issue.
But I was suprised by a little detail in the Ferpècle Glacier, in the Évolène valley, near Sion, Switzerland.

There were several trees on the river bed, just below the ice edge. A clearly retreating ice edge, one has to say. On the first photo, you'll see the remains of the tree on the river bed.
The second photo show a general view from a recent morraine. You'll see the same hole on the glacier from which melt waters flow in its context. The area is at 2000m above sea level and you'll see no trees.

Can anyone explain where these trees came from? I say trees because there were several of them, and we could even see one inside the glacier.

 

[turbo]

Glaciers are slow, but not "frozen" in the sense that they do not move. When they advance, they pretty much knock down and engulf anything in the way. Since the trees knocked down by the last advance are encased in ice and protected from air, the wood can be preserved for a very long time (remember the "ice-man" found in a glacier years ago, with his clothing, tools, and weapons well-preserved?). No mystery.

 

[vivesdn]

Ok. Agree, but let me clarify: nowdays, at 2000m (6500feet?) there are no trees on that area. And as you point, those trees were even higher when the glacier started to grow.

So the question is: where were those trees growing when the glacier started to grow? And when the glacier started to grow?

 

[turbo]

As temperatures change, the borders between boreal forest/tundra change. Apparently, at some time prior to the last glacial advance, it was once warm enough to allow trees to grow at high elevations.

 

[Xnn]

About 10,000 years ago, the Earth's orbit was different than it is now, in that the perihelion occurred during the northern hemisphere summer. This made summers warm enough to melt high elevation glaciers and resulted in Alpine glaciers retreating significantly.

Since that time, as the Earth's orbit shifted towards cooler NH summers, Alpine glaciers have been generally advancing. So, those trees most likely grew in the general area between after 10,000 years ago.

At about 6,000 years ago, the glaciers started to advance and have buried many things.

It has only been fairly recently, with global warming, that the glaciers have retreated, despite perihilion occurring in the winter, and started exposing areas that were buried.

 

[vivesdn]

So do you really think that those trees are 10000 years old?

 

[turbo]

So do you really think that those trees are 10000 years old?

Carbon-dating would tell, though if a previous glacial recession had left them uncovered for many years, they would have rotted. It's probably safe to assume that these trees were buried in the last glacial advance in that region.

 

[vivesdn]

I was wondering if the trees were not so old, and covered by the glacier not much higher than where they are now. The alternative is that they are as old as it seems, but then they must come from much higher!

Basically, if Little Ice Age was playing a role on this issue, or a proof of a warmer Europe when Rome was ruling.

 

[Xnn]

So do you really think that those trees are 10000 years old?

Otzi the ice man was about buried 5300 years ago. So, those trees could be roughly between 5,300 to 10,000 years old; at least that is my guess.

Besides Otzi, I believe they also found other human belongings under some other alpine glacier that were about 6,500 years old. Apparently, ice is a great preservative. Maybe somebody will publish an actual scientific study them and come up with a precise age.

 

[Andre]

Really nothing to speculate before having carbon dates. It could be anything. Remember that there were more trees under the ice. Like this "needle" under the http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~www-glac/ngrip/billeder_eng.htm

However it turned out to be willow bark and it was beyond carbon dating. The ice around it was much older than 100,000 years.

 

[vivesdn]

Of course carbon dating would tell, but I do not know if it has been dated.
For me it is hard to imagine that such big trees suffering ice pressure for 10000 years apear in one piece. Melt waters on that area are milky due to glacier erosion on local rock.

 

[LURCH]

Sort of an aside, but...Vivesdn; you're a lot younger than I'd assumed.

 

[vivesdn]

Ok. I should have spent some seconds to crop the picture.
That kid today is still 6.

D

 

[hypatia]

Really great photos, I love to visit spots like that.

 

[LURCH]

I would guess (and that's all it is) that the glacier picked up those trees somewhere below the treeline, and dragged them to their current location.

 

[mgb_phys]

Glaciers don't move up the valley as such, they melt at the end so the 'end point' moves up but it doesn't drag anything,

 

[Mammo]

Of course carbon dating would tell, but I do not know if it has been dated.
For me it is hard to imagine that such big trees suffering ice pressure for 10000 years apear in one piece. Melt waters on that area are milky due to glacier erosion on local rock.

It's even possible that the Gulf Stream was stronger in the recent past and that this brought even warmer weather than that of today to mainland Europe.

 

[mgb_phys]

The climate for the last 20,000 years is pretty well known.
Current glaciers are generally the remains of the glaciers formed in the last ice age.

Glaciers gradually flow down the alley, bringing debris with them, as more snow falls at the top. The extent (position of the end) of the glacier does vary during the year (summer-winter) and year to year as temperatures change - although on average they have been retreating.

The problem is that the ice preserves things rather well so without analysis it's difficult to tell if these trees are 1 year or 1000years old!
It could be that a few warm decades allowed trees to grow in front of a retreating glacier which then expaned, or some trees might have grown in a sunny sheltered spot above the official tree line and were washed own into the glacier. Or they could even be the remains of some structure built last summer and have only just been covered.

 

[LURCH]

...It could be that a few warm decades allowed trees to grow in front of a retreating glacier which then expaned, or some trees might have grown in a sunny sheltered spot above the official tree line and were washed own into the glacier...

Or (as I was speculating) the tree could have grown below the treeline in a valley somewhere "upstream," within the glacier, then been pushed uphill (but "downstream") to where they currently lie.

 

[mgb_phys]

The current glaciers are well above the current treeline and presumably since the last ice age the glaciers and the tree line have both been moving up. Thats the confusion.

 

[vivesdn]

What I've found in several places is that in the middle ages, glaciers where growing, at least in Europe. Settlements in Greenland and Iceland where abandoned due to crop failure.
What I do not know is where was the tree line and where were the glaciers before that.

Depending on the answer, it is unlikely that the trees are young or there is a chance that those trees are not so old.

 

[Mike Davis]

I read a report last year about alps glaciers that reported several periods of retreat and advances proven by dating trees. They showed the RWP and MWP as being warmer than today long enough for trees to advance to higher altitudes. They also had time to reach a fair age as shown by rings.

 

[canuck1]

Trees under Glaciers and Global Warming

Googling the web, I found a lot of different sites describing where trees and entire spruce forests have been found under some recently retreating glaciers, in locations where they had apparently grown 5 to 10 thousand years ago.

This indicates that at that time such glaciers did not cover the area were the trees were discovered, and since sliding ice masses of glaciers have the power to dislocate and move Earth (including rocks, soil, and anything that grows on it) down hill, the forest or trees that were found probably had been growing a lot farther up the glacial bed then where they were recently found.

So the glaciers were not at these locations when the trees grew. That means the world was warmer at that time, than now when the trees were found.

Much warmer then now, and for a very long time to allow any environment to become favorable for very primitive plant life such as lichens and moss to establish at first and gradually built up to that allowing growth of non-pioneering species of trees.

The question then must be asked who caused the world climate to warm up then? Who burnt all the oil and gas then to cause global warming?

If present global warming is supposed to be caused by extra carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere by man's increased burning of fossil fuels, then why were there ice ages during times when all the carbon dioxide that is now buried as fossil fuel was still in the atmosphere?

Yes, it had to be all in the atmosphere before it was absorbed by plants, some of which were consumed by animals, and all of which then formed peat moss, coal, natural gas, etc.

A wise man once said an expert is somebody who has learned more and more in his field, until he knows everything about nothing and nothing else.

The man-made global warming experts need to look a little bit beyond their expertise, to see the same facts of life seen by us mere laymen.

 

[mspelto]

I have found a number of wood samples from beneath glaciers in Washington and Alaska. They have all dated from the period of 4000-6000 BP. In general glacier were more restricted then. The Neoglacial advances then occurred, with the Little Ice Age in the Pacific Northwest being as large as any of the neoglacial advances.
I reviewed a paper earlier this year from the Alps
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBC-4W55T5B-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_search
There is another paper I recall that reviewed the dating of wood including from Ferpecle.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118596688/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
In British Columbia I reviewed another paper this year on the topic. The link provides much more detailed pictures and maps then the typical paper.
http://www.sfu.ca/~jkoch/research/Garibaldi/holocene.htm

 

[Xnn]

Trees under Glaciers and Global Warming

Googling the web, I found a lot of different sites describing where trees and entire spruce forests have been found under some recently retreating glaciers, in locations where they had apparently grown 5 to 10 thousand years ago.

Much warmer then now, and for a very long time to allow any environment to become favorable for very primitive plant life such as lichens and moss to establish at first and gradually built up to that allowing growth of non-pioneering species of trees.

The question then must be asked who caused the world climate to warm up then? Who burnt all the oil and gas then to cause global warming?

If present global warming is supposed to be caused by extra carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere by man's increased burning of fossil fuels, then why were there ice ages during times when all the carbon dioxide that is now buried as fossil fuel was still in the atmosphere?

The Holocene Thermal Optimium occurred between 5,000 to 9,000 years ago.
Depending on the location, some areas of the northern hemisphere were warmer than the present or at least what we used to consider as normal.

The Earth's orbit was significantly different back then with more intense sunshine during the northern hemisphere summers. Since that time, the Earth's orbit has gradually reduced the intensity of sunshine during the northern hemisphere summers and we would expect to see the advancement of glaciers and ice caps in the north.

However, the current rate of rise of CO2 levels has more than compensated for the falling levels of Northern Hemisphere sunshine which is why the melt back is occurring now.

 

[Andre]

However, the current rate of rise of CO2 levels has more than compensated for the falling levels of Northern Hemisphere sunshine which is why the melt back is occurring now.

No, the Holocene Thermal Maximum was several degrees warmer than today, see for instance http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5124&posts=60&start=1 . How does that compare to the some 0.8 C since the mid nineteeth century?

Disclaimer: any resemblance of members there with existing members here is a pure coincidence.

Curiously enough the ice core isotopes do not really register that much difference:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.gif

(Source)

 

[Xnn]

Andre;

The last point on your chart is the Little Ice age.
It's misleading to suggest that as representative of current temperatures.
It's also misleading to suggest that the global rise in temperature is representative
of the rise in Greenland. The polar regions are warming faster than the globe.


When both summer and winter temperatures are considered across a wider
area, then they are found to be within 0.5C over the last 6,000 years.

See the following study for Europe; especially figure 5:

The temperature of Europe during the Holocene reconstructed
from pollen data

http://www.gi.ee/pdfid/10616.pdf

 

[mspelto]

Xnn does a good job indicating why the Greenland ice Core record shown does not reflect current temperature.

It is true we have had lots of recent examples of wood exposed from retreating glaciers that dates to the early Holocene 5000-7000 BP. In many cases the same glaciers started at their most expansive state in the Holocene at the end of the Little Ice Age, and have retreated exposing older and older buried forest deposits during the last 50 years. If a tree has been buried in ice since being killed say 6400 years ago, it suggests that today is the warmest prolonged interval since then. It does not indicate it was warmer then, as we are early in this current period of warming. First the glacier has to retreat and then given the ecesis rate we must wait a few decades for vegetation to become reestablished where it did grow 7000 years ago. http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/helm-glacier-melting-away/" note the links to the two papers by Koch et al (2007 and 2009).

 

[LBJ]

Three years ago, I spend some days on the Swiss Alps.
All the glaciers we visited were in clear recession. Ok, this is a global issue.
But I was suprised by a little detail in the Ferpècle Glacier, in the Évolène valley, near Sion, Switzerland.

There were several trees on the river bed, just below the ice edge. A clearly retreating ice edge, one has to say. On the first photo, you'll see the remains of the tree on the river bed.
The second photo show a general view from a recent morraine. You'll see the same hole on the glacier from which melt waters flow in its context. The area is at 2000m above sea level and you'll see no trees.

Can anyone explain where these trees came from? I say trees because there were several of them, and we could even see one inside the glacier.

Tree lines are as much a preduct of atmospheric density as they are of general weather conditions. Remember that CO2 is heavier than air, remember that it is also a significant gas in volcanic eruptions,and methane ice eruptions. So check the correlation between these activities and average temperature.

Did anyone see the PBS special where they recovered an intact WW2 airplane under the ice in Greenland? That plane landed safely, but between 1941 and ~2000 it was buried under several meters of snow that had turned to ice.

If treelines were higher in the past due to a denser atmosphere caused by volcanic activity and/or methane ice eruptions under the oceans then as the atmosphere corrected itself through carbon sequestration the tree line would retreat, trees would die and be buried under renewed and increasing snowfall. As they were incorporated into the glacier the average depth of burial would increase until it seemed as if they had been inundated beneath the glacier, when, in actuality it was really the depth of snow atop them that accounts for their burial depth.



LBJ

 

[Integral]

Tree lines are as much a preduct of atmospheric density as they are of general weather conditions. Remember that CO2 is heavier than air, remember that it is also a significant gas in volcanic eruptions,and methane ice eruptions. So check the correlation between these activities and average temperature.

The CO2 in the troposphere is considered well mixed except in the vicinity of sources, that is cities and factories, or sinks like forests. What you have listed here are certainly some of the factors effecting temperature, but they do not act alone.

Did anyone see the PBS special where they recovered an intact WW2 airplane under the ice in Greenland? That plane landed safely, but between 1941 and ~2000 it was buried under several meters of snow that had turned to ice.

If you do a bit of investigation you will find that the plane sank into the ice. 2 factors here it is heavy and being dark colored when the sun was shining it was warmer then the surrounding ice so over time it melted its way down, as well as getting covered in ice. But really it has nothing to do with this discussion.

If treelines were higher in the past due to a denser atmosphere caused by volcanic activity and/or methane ice eruptions under the oceans then as the atmosphere corrected itself through carbon sequestration the tree line would retreat, trees would die and be buried under renewed and increasing snowfall. As they were incorporated into the glacier the average depth of burial would increase until it seemed as if they had been inundated beneath the glacier, when, in actuality it was really the depth of snow atop them that accounts for their burial depth.



LBJ

Of course this last is speculation on your part, some links we could read are needed.