Icy Developments

Victoria University glaciologist Dr Andrew Mackintosh has released findings of a study which shows that southern  hemisphere glaciers evolve quite differently to those in the north. “Don’t assume that warming will be uniform over the earth,” Mackintosh says. Mackintosh says the advance and retreat of glaciers are a good indication of climate change. But, he says, there has been some concern that studies of glaciers to date have not been representative of global trends. Mackintosh and colleagues plotted the retreat and advance of glaciers in New Zealand over the past 11,500 years and compared it to data gathered from northern hemisphere moraines. He and colleagues found that overall, northern hemisphere glaciers grew until the end of what is known as the Little Ice Age in the 1800s, when they began to retreat. By contrast, southern hemisphere glaciers have on the whole been shrinking throughout the Holocene.