Guliya Ice Cap

Project Overview | 1992

In 1992, an American-Chinese expedition successfully recovered a 308.6-meter ice core (see drill in photograph) from the Guliya ice cap (35^o17'N, 81^o29'E; summit 6710 m a.s.l.) in the far western Kunlun Shan on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China (see map). Guliya resembles a "polar" ice cap, is surrounded by vertical 30 to 40 meter ice walls (see photographs) and has internal temperatures of -15.6^o, -5.9^o, and -2.1^oC at 10m, 200m and the base, respectively.  The 308.6 m core to bedrock provides the first high resolution ice core record of the last glacial cycle as recorded in the subtropics. The papers below discuss the late Holocene portion of the record, and the last glacial cycle, respectively. 

Thompson, L.G., M.E. Davis, P.N. Lin, J. Dai, J.F. Bolzan, and T. Yao. 1995. 1000 year climate ice-core record from the Guliya ice cap, China: its relationship to global climate variability. Annals of Glaciology, 21, 175-181. PDF

Thompson, L.G., T. Yao, M.E. Davis, K.A. Henderson, E. Mosley-Thompson, P.N. Lin, J. Beer, H.-A. Synal, J. Cole-Dai, and J.F. Bolzan. 1997. Tropical climate instability: The last glacial cycle from a Qinghai-Tibetan ice core. Science, 276: 1821-25. PDF

Project Overview | 2015

A return expedition to Guliya was completed between September and October 2015, during which time a 309.79 m ice core was drilled to bedrock on the Guliya Plateau (GP; 6200 m above sea level) in addition to 3 ice cores (each ~51 m in length) that were drilled to bedrock at the Guliya Summit (GS; 6710 m above sea level). These are the first full-length ice core records retrieved from the ice cap since the previous drilling campaign in 1992, and the cores from the GS are the first of their kind [Thompson et al. 2018]. A complimentary study using ground-penetrating radar experiments to measure ice thicknesses at Guliya is given by Kutuzov et al. [2018]. Preliminary results from the ice cores are reported by Beaudon et al. [2022] and Thompson et al. [2018; 2022; 2024].

References

Beaudon, E., Sheets, J. M., Martin, E., Sierra-Hernández, M. R., Mosley-Thompson, E., & Thompson, L. G. (2022). Aeolian Dust Preserved in the Guliya Ice Cap (Northwestern Tibet): A Promising Paleo-Environmental Messenger. Geosciences, 12(10), 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences12100366 

Kutuzov, S., Thompson, L. G., Lavrentiev, I., & Tian, L. (2018). Ice thickness measurements of Guliya ice cap, western Kunlun Mountains (Tibetan Plateau), China. Journal of Glaciology, 64(248), 977–989. https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.91 

Thompson, L. G., Yao, T., Davis, M. E., Mosley-Thompson, E., Wu, G., Porter, S. E., Xu, B., Lin, P.-N., Wang, N., Beaudon, E., Duan, K., Sierra-Hernández, M. R., & Kenny, D. V. (2018). Ice core records of climate variability on the Third Pole with emphasis on the Guliya ice cap, western Kunlun Mountains. Quaternary Science Reviews, 188, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.03.003 

Thompson, L. G., Severinghaus, J. P., Yao, T., Davis, M. E., Mosley-Thompson, E., Beaudon, E., Sierra-Hernández, M. R., & Porter, S. E. (2022). Use of δ18Oatm in dating a Tibetan ice core record of Holocene/Late Glacial climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(45), e2205545119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2205545119 

Thompson, L. G., Yao, T.-D., Davis, M. E., Mosley-Thompson, E., Synal, H.-A., Wu, G., Bolzan, J. F., Kutuzov, S., Beaudon, E., Sierra-Hernández, M. R., & Beer, J. (2024). Ice core evidence for an orbital-scale climate transition on the Northwest Tibetan Plateau. Quaternary Science Reviews, 324, 108443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108443