1 Glacier extent and climate in the Maritime Alps during the Younger Dryas 2 Matteo Spagnolo1, Adriano Ribolini2 3 1 School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen (UK) (corresponding author:
[email protected]) 4 2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Universita’ di Pisa (Italy) 5 6 Keywords: Younger Dryas; glacier reconstruction; equilibrium line altitude; palaeoclimate; 7 cosmogenic dates; Maritime Alps 8 9 Abstract 10 This study focuses on an Egesen-stadial moraine located at 1906-1920 m asl in the NE Maritime Alps, 11 Europe. Three moraine boulders are dated, via cosmogenic isotope analyses, to 12,490 ± 1120, 12,260 12 ± 1220 and 13,840 ± 1240 yr, an age compatible with the Younger Dryas cooling event. The 13 reconstructed glacier that deposited the moraine has an equilibrium line altitude of 2349 ± 5 m asl, 14 calculated with an Accumulation Area Balance Ratio of 1.6. The result is very similar to the equilibrium 15 line altitude of another reconstructed glacier that deposited a moraine also dated to Younger Dryas, 16 in the SW Maritime Alps. The similarity suggests comparable climatic conditions across the region 17 during the cooling event. The Younger Dryas palaeoprecipitation is 1549 ±26 mm/yr, calculated using 18 the empirical law that links precipitation and temperature at a glacier equilibrium line altitude, with 19 palaeotemperatures obtained from nearby palynological and chironomids studies. The 20 palaeoprecipitation is similar to the present, thus indicating non-arid conditions during the Younger 21 Dryas. This is probably due to the Maritime Alps peculiar position, at the crossroads between air 22 masses from the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, the latter displaced by the southward 23 migration of the polar front.