“To know your future you must know your past.”

“To know your future you must know your past.” There is no better way to start the new semester with expanding the field of view on the Himalayas by looking at the paleoclimate and environment changes through time. 

The Quaternary period where the transition from the Quaternary Ice Age, to Oldest Dryas, Older Dryas/Allerød and Younger Dryas and to current Holocene Interglacial, represents a distinctive period with typical climate events and environmental changes influencing earth ecosystems. The behaviours of glaciation and hydrology in Himalaya–Tibetan orogen at different regions have oscillated throughout the Quaternary driven by different climatic forcing, in turn, could have had a major impact on global climate. It is of great importance for paleoecological research to understand the nature and dynamics of the Quaternary changes on this high land and adjacent regions.


Many studies have applied the proxies records on Quaternary geological archives from Himalaya–Tibetan to reconstruct and model climate history. Scientists undertake the comprehensive techniques of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) surface exposure dating (common in quartz from most Himalayan and Tibetan rocks) to define the timing of glaciation and correlated to various palaeoclimatic records for more adequate hypotheses testings. Abundant glacial evidence suggests glaciers advanced several times during each glacial stage last glacial cycle. Temporal and spatial variability was reflected in particular in the monsoon-influenced regions, resulting from the south Asian monsoon and mid-latitude westerlies circulation. Glacial advances in particular north Himalayas reached the maximum during MIS 3 and MIS5, synchronous with Northern Hemisphere cooling cycling and attributed to the strengthed monsoon precipitation as snowfall at highland during these times of increased North Hemisphere insolation. LGM (MI2) insolation minima slowed down the glacial advance and snow accumulation due to reduced influence of monsoon, while south Himalayan loop was on the contrary as lower insolation increased cloud cover and moisture flux allowing glacier to grow. In Tibet, the same behaviours appeared and even in MIS2 with less monsoon influence the temperatures were low enough to keep positive glacier mass balance and enable glacier advance throughout to early Holocene.

Source: . Simplified glacial chronologies for the Late Quaternary (back to 100 ka) that have been numerically dated throughout the Himalaya and Tibet. The black bars represent times of glacial advance, (adapted from Owen LA, Caffee MW, Finkel RC, and Seong BY (2008) Quaternary glaciations of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen. Journal of Quaternary Science 23: 513–532; Owen LA (2009) Latest Pleistocene and Holocene glacier fluctuations in the Himalaya and Tibet. Quaternary Science Reviews28: 2150–2164)


Further to apply paleohydrological proxies from the sedimentary records collected from the lakes of Tibetan Plateau, climatic variations were quantitatively reconstructed for a better understanding of the climate history of Tibet-Himalayas. Günther et al.chose Nam Co (lake in south Tibet) as study area, by comparing hydrogen isotopes (δD) of n-alkanes of the lake and inflow water with the proxies from south Asian monsoon areas (June insolation, atmospheric CO2,Carbonate oxygen isotopes and foraminifera such as Globigerina bulloides) have validated the south Asian monsoon as driving forces for the lake system change and aquatic response during glacial-internal glacial transition. The results also agree that solar insolation has an essential influence on the monsoon dynamic and intensity. Other biological indicators like fossil pollen and weathering indicators have also been used for quantitative palaeoclimate reconstruction of precipitation and temperature, revealing that annual precipitation during Holocene is nearly double in comparison to LGM, and presenting the same forcings behind the climate change over Tibetan Plataue since the LGM.