A research study led by Marc Oliva, researcher at the University of Barcelona, analyses the evolution of glaciers on the Hurd Peninsula in Antarctica, home to the Spanish Juan Carlos I Antarctic Base. This study, published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, covers the period from more than 30,000 years ago to the present day, and shows that glaciers have been fairly stable over the last millennia in this polar location."The glaciers on the Hurd Peninsula have only shifted a few hundred metres in the last 4,000 years; unlike in other areas of the polar regions, where the ice retreat has been accelerated, in this sector it is a fairly relative retreat", Oliva explains. The researcher stresses that the research is particularly interesting for the Spanish scientific community, since it studies the territory where the Juan Carlos I Base is located. "Therefore, researchers at this base will have to consider the timetable of glacier retreat presented in this work to contextualize their research on the soil, flora, fauna and climate history", he points out.
The study points to a thinning of the ice sheet, probably before the period known as the Last Glacial Maximum, about 30,000 years ago, and that the melting process accelerated between about 20,000 and 13,000 years ago. Thereafter, the Hurd Peninsula ice cap may have remained relatively stable, with minor oscillations of ice masses, until the mid-Holocene, when neoglacial advances occurred (between about 4,000 and 4,500 years ago). The last of these advances, as well as subsequent stabilization, occurred during the period known as the Little Ice Age in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
