The Alps had been freed from ice 6000 years in the past – what did that convey?

Reposted from the No Tricks Zone

By P Gosselin on January 6, 2021

Ice-free Alps… 6000 years ago, when CO2 was much lower than it is today.

Dr. Sebastian Lüning published his latest Climate Show Report No. 6 today. In the first part he deals with glaciers in the Alps during much of the Holocene.

It turns out that most of the Alps were ice-free 6000 years ago, glaciologists discovered.

In his video, the German geologist presents a new work by the glaciologists Bohleber et al., 2020 of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The Austrian-Swiss team discovered from ice cores that the 3500-meter-high summit of the Weißseespitze was ice-free 5900 years ago.

Much warmer in the early Holocene

Lüning next shows why the Alps were ice-free 6000 years ago, using a map by Heiri et al. 2015, which shows that it was about 2 ° C warmer than today.

Starting about 10,000 years ago, after the end of the Ice Age, all glaciers below 4000 meters in the Eastern Alps melted away in the following years. Then, 6000 years ago, the cooling started again and the glaciers returned (neoglaciation). The temperatures in the Alps are still well below the early Holocene.

Today’s glacier retreat is very controversial

Ötzi was injured 5,300 years ago just a few kilometers from the Weißseespitze, says Lüning. “The historical glacier melt shows that today’s glacier retreat is not a new phenomenon. Whether the glaciers of the Eastern Alps will completely melt again remains a scientific debate. “

You can also find many more non-alarming articles about glaciers here.

All images cropped from Klimaschau, issue 6

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