Licciardi, Joseph M Oregon State University Significant climate variability at higher-than-orbital frequencies is now recognized as an important signal in late Pleistocene ice and sediment records from the circum-North Atlantic region. Records elsewhere also reveal climate variability at millennial timescales and identify important but poorly understood mechanisms of climate change. This doctoral dissertation project will examine the record of late-Pleistocene glaciers in the western U.S. Better dating of the record and identification of the mechanisms of its associated climate signal are objectives which will lead to a fuller understanding of the spatial and temporal ranges of climate change in this region. The intent is to develop an improved numerical chronology of mountain glaciation using newly developed surface exposure methods and apply these to numerous glacial moraines in mountain ranges of the western U.S. The primary objective is to establish production rates of cosmogenic nuclides from radiocarbon-dated flows. Results of the research will shed new light on our understanding of stratigraphic complexity from one mountain range to another. It will also serve to reveal the variation in climate in this region over the past 50,000 years.
