Historical Variations of Lemon Creek Glacier, Alaska, and Their Relationship to the Climatic Record

Abstract

Abstract Lemon Creek Glacier served as the focus of attention of the Juneau Ice Field Research Project from 1953 through 1958, during which period glaciological and related research was accomplished. This paper provides an historical framework for those studies by (1) considering variations of Lemon Creek Glacier in recent centuries and during millennia since the last ice age, and (2) describing certain relationships which appear to exist between these variations and the climatic record. It is found that Lemon Creek Glacier has been receding intermittently since a maximum c . 1750 and by 1958 had lost c . 25 per cent of the former area. Most rapid recession occurred during the periods 1891–1902 and 1929–58. Behaviour of the glacier since c . 1750 reveals a parallelism with glaciers in most of the regions where temperature trends have been graphed as well as with other glaciers of the Juneau Ice Field. The advances of the 1950’s observed in the Rocky, Cascade and Olympic Mountains do not, however, show up in the Juneau area. Lemon Creek Glacier has not advanced more than 375 m. beyond the 1750 position, if at all, during the last 10,000 yr.