This cross-disciplinary project seeks to address these major limitations by launching a research programme that will collect and produce data on glacier variability throughout the last 10 000 years, a research effort that will be carried out in the polar regions of the World. Alpine glaciers represent natural systems that are particular sensitive to climate change (this we know from modern observations) and the sites chosen for this purpose are also located in areas that are witnessing rapid ongoing change including Spitsbergen and Sennalandet in Arctic Norway (northern hemisphere) as well as South Georgia and Kerguelen (southern hemisphere). Comparable datasets on glacier variability will provide new high-quality proxy-data on spatial, temporal, and scalar climate change through the Holocene. By doing so we will be able to construct accurate reconstructions of past shifts and trends in the major polar atmospheric circulation systems, as these are intimately linked to the physical activity of alpine glaciers.  

Changes in glacial activity depend on the balance between summer melting and winter accumulation. Glacial activity can be detected and quantified through sediment changes in distal glacier-fed lakes. The sediment-cores from each lake characterized by invoking multi-proxy analyses, including rock magnetic properties (palaeomagnetism), physical properties, grain-size distribution, and geochemical variations detected by XRF and X-ray analyses. Age control of the sedimentary sequences will be provided by a suite of dating methods, integrating cosmogenic analyses, lichenometry, radiocarbon dating, advanced radiocarbon dating (gas-hydration), tephra chronology, and geomagnetic palaeointensity. Geomorphological mapping of moraines in lake catchments and control of lake sedimentary infill by seismic investigations will also be applied. Finally, the interpretations of the multi-proxy data will be validated against recent climate data and glacier mass-balance measurements at regional scale where these are available.

The new and improved reconstructions of high-resolution glacial-based palaeoclimatic variations will venture beyond the current state-of-the-art and will provide significantly enhanced and robust documentation of multi-decadal climate changes during the Holocene (<11 700 years).