SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences © Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 earth.scichina.com www.springerlink.com *Corresponding author (email: zhuhf@itpcas.ac.cn) • RESEARCH PAPER • January 2011 Vol.54 No.1: 1–9 doi: 10.1007/s11430-011-4338-3 Tree ring-dated fluctuation history of Midui glacier since the Little Ice Age in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau XU Peng 1,4 , ZHU HaiFeng 2* , SHAO XueMei 1 & YIN ZhiYong 3 1 Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; 2 Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; 3 Department of Marine Science and Environmental Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110, USA; 4 Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China Received May 23, 2011; accepted August 2, 2011 Fluctuation history of Midui glacier in the southeastern Tibet since the Little Ice Age (LIA) was reconstructed by the dating of lateral and terminal moraines using tree rings. Four conversions of glacier advance/stabilization to retreat were identified at around 1767, 1875, 1924 and 1964. The glacier reached its LIA maximum position at 1767. The fluctuations are consistent with those of other glaciers from the Tibetan Plateau, the Rockies and the Alps, suggesting high spatial coherency of glacier fluctuations in the Northern Hemisphere. Comparison with the summer temperature reconstruction in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau indicated that the Midui glacier fluctuation may be related to temperature variation on the centennial timescale. On the decadal scale, the fluctuation could correspond to cold/warm variation with an 8-year lag on average. Tibetan Plateau, glacier fluctuation, tree ring, Little Ice Age, climate change, moraine dating Citation: Xu P, Zhu H F, Shao X M, et al. Tree ring-dated fluctuation history of Midui glacier since the Little Ice Age in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Sci China Earth Sci, 2011, doi: 10.1007/s11430-011-4338-3 The Tibetan Plateau, an area mainly under the control of the westerlies and the South Asian monsoon, is one center of the mountain glaciers in the low to mid latitudes of the earth [1]. During the recent decades, most glaciers here experi- enced tremendous retreat. For example, some glaciers in the Gangrigabu mountain retreated at a rate of about 15–19 m per year [2–6]. The drastic shrinkage of the glaciers not only threatens the water resource safety of the rivers sup- plied by the glacier meltwater, but also leads to various nat- ural disasters, such as glacial lake outbursts and debris flows [7]. Studies on the glacier changes on the Tibetan Plateau will help evaluate the possible influence of the fu- ture climate changes on the glacier water resources and pro- vide scientific basis for the prevention of natural disasters. However, most observations on the glacier variation are short and scarce, which greatly limits the understanding of glacier fluctuation and its response to climate change on long timescales [2, 6, 8–10]. Therefore, it is necessary to reconstruct the history of glacier fluctuations. Tree-ring dating, as an accurate method, has been widely used to reconstruct past glacier fluctuations in many areas of the world, such as the Canadian Rockies [11–16], the Alaska [17–20], the Andes [21–26], the Alps [27], etc. On the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, there are a great number of temperate glaciers, which account for about 22.2% of the total glacier area in China [6]. The terminus of glaciers in the Nyainqêntanglha Mountains can extend to a mean alti- tude of 3755 m a.s.l., with some low to 2530 m a.s.l., which is much lower than the timberlines there [28, 29]. Some trees on the path of the glacier advance were damaged or even killed, and on the other hand, trees recolonized the relics after glacier retreat. Hence, these trees could provide doi: 10.1007/s11430-011-4338-3