Studies of ice extent, volume and dynamics during former glaciations are important for understanding past climates and evolution of the Earth’s surface, and also provide analogies for present-day ice sheets and their subglacial environments. This includes observations of glacial erosion, glacial transport and deposition of sediments, formation of fjords and their relation to ice streams, evidence for migration of ice divides, former locations of subglacial lakes, relations between high geothermal heat flow, basal ice melt and rapid ice flow, and other aspects of paleo glacier extent and behaviour. This session will bring together the interdisciplinary scientific community working on former ice covers from the perspectives of glacial geomorphology, quaternary geology, and numerical modeling. It will provide a forum in which field-based reconstructions and model-based simulations can be compared and contrasted. We particularly welcome contributions that shed light on ancient and more recent glaciations on Earth and their interaction with other components of the Earth System.

Invited speaker: David Sugden (University of Edinburgh, UK)

David will talk about "Using blue-ice moraines to constrain elevation changes of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in the southern Ellsworth Mountains"