Glacial Flooding & Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Exchange and Field Training July 11-24, 2013 in Huaraz, Peru HighMountains.org/workshop/peru-2013
What prevents to make a reliable long-‐term forecast of glacial and climatic changes in Central Asia? Paleoglaciological base for long-‐term forecasting from new starting positions by the example of the Tien Shan, Pamir and Himalayas Vladimir I. Shatravin Tien Shan High-‐Mountain Scientific Center of National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic E-‐mail: Shatravin@yandex.ru What prevents to make a reliable long-‐term forecast of glacial and climatic changes in Central Asia? Deep contradictions which have place in quaternary geology and paleoglaciology prevent from making a reliable long-‐term forecast. During INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) in 1957 was made a conclusion: “The request on stratigraphic scale of Quaternary period sent to 22 countries received 22 different responses”, and in Congress hold in 1973 was stated that the situation did not change to a better [1]. By now, 40 years later, the situation did not become better. Definitely this is the result of deep contradictions, if they are not eliminated then all attempts to make long-‐term forecast will be perspectiveless. Researchers have been doing paleoglacial reconstructions of the Quaternary for over 100 years. However, they have not definitely established even the number of Pleistocene glaciations on Earth, and have not clarified the very nature of Holocene glaciation. Tien Shan and Pamir are not exception in this regard. The existing paleoglacial information for these regions is fragmentary and quite contradictory. In general, this subject is a big informative mess. Nowadays there are a lot of highly contradictive paleoglaciological schemes, for the Holocene inclusively. Among the lasts there is a model of stadial degradation of the Holocene glaciers and the model of their quasistationary states, implicating relative stability of climate in the Holocene. General reasons of contradictions We have established the general reasons which are mentioned below: 1– the incorrect genetic typing of moraines and pseudomoraines which is traditionally carried out. 2– the lack of reliable absolute datings of moraines. 1. Incorrect genetic typing of moraines and pseudomoraines [4, 5-‐8]. As main climatic and stratigraphic marks of high mountain regions researchers use not only true moraines but pceudomoraines, improperly take them for moraines. For the Tien Shan, Pamir and partly for the Himalayas, on the base of developed by us quantitative facial-‐ lithological indicators (geochemical, granulometric and others), it was determined that all morphological formations of mountain areas, traditionally taken for early-‐ and Middle Pleistocene moraines, as well as significant part of such formations taken for Late Pleistocene moraines, in fact are Late Pleistocene-‐Holocene pceudomoraines, which true