Climate of Our Future

Studying Evidence From Ice Age Lakes

Science Daily — During the last Ice Age, the ice dammed enormous lakes in Russia. The drainage system was reversed several times and the rivers flowed southwards. A group of geologists is now investigating what took place when the ice melted and the lakes released huge volumes of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean.

”The ice-dammed lakes in Russia were larger than the largest lakes we know today,” Eiliv Larsen, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU), tells me. He is in charge of the important SciencePub International Polar Year project that is studying natural climate changes in the Arctic and the ways in which man has adapted to them.

Moving glaciers

”The entire drainage system in Russia has been reversed several times during the past 130 000 years. The heavy ice cap covering the land area in the north dammed up lakes and forced the large rivers, the Dvina, Mezen, Pechora and Vychegda, to flow southwards to the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and on to the Mediterranean,” Eiliv Larsen continues. Read More…