Gorin Andrew L, Shakun Jeremy D, Jones Andrew G, Kennedy Tori M, Marcott Shaun A, Goehring Brent M, Zoet Lucas K, Jomelli Vincent, Bromley Gordon R M, Mateo Emilio I, Mark Bryan G, Rodbell Donald T, Gilbert Adrien, Caffee Marc W
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.
Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Science. 2024 Aug 2;385(6708):517-521. doi: 10.1126/science.adg7546. Epub 2024 Aug 1.
Tropical glaciers have retreated over recent decades, but whether the magnitude of this retreat exceeds the bounds of Holocene fluctuations is unclear. We measured cosmogenic beryllium-10 and carbon-14 concentrations in recently exposed bedrock at the margin of four glaciers spanning the tropical Andes to reconstruct their past extents relative to today. Nuclide concentrations are near zero in almost all samples, suggesting that these locations were never exposed during the Holocene. Our data imply that many glaciers in the tropics are probably now smaller than they have been in at least 11,700 years, making the tropics the first large region where this milestone has been documented.
近几十年来，热带地区的冰川一直在退缩，但这种退缩的幅度是否超出全新世波动的范围尚不清楚。我们测量了横跨热带安第斯山脉的四条冰川边缘最近暴露的基岩中的宇宙成因铍 - 10和碳 - 14浓度，以重建它们相对于今天的过去范围。几乎所有样本中的核素浓度都接近零，这表明这些地点在全新世期间从未暴露过。我们的数据表明，热带地区的许多冰川现在可能比至少11700年来的任何时候都要小，这使得热带地区成为第一个记录到这一里程碑的大区域。
