Holocene glacier and climate fluctuations of the maritime ice cap Høgtuvbreen, northern Norway:

Holocene fluctuations of a small outlet glacier from the ice cap Hogtuvbreen at 65° N in coastal northern Norway are reconstructed based on distal glacier-fed lake sediments, complemented by a moraine sequence dated by lichenometry. Glaciers respond to changes in accumulation-season precipitation, ablation-season temperature and redistribution of snow by wind. Hence, reconstructions of glacier fluctuations based on distal glacier-fed lakes may give detailed information about past climate at a potentially high temporal resolution. Yet, the importance of any of these climate components is often difficult to solve. Here, we apply the ‘Liestol-relationship’, which expresses the relationship between ablation-season temperature and annual accumulation of snow at the equilibrium line altitude (ELA), to the reconstructed local temperature–precipitation–wind ELA (TPW-ELA) to infer the relative importance of winter-balance and ablation-season temperature as causes of reconstructed glacier variation. The reconstruct...