Glacier Reconstruction on Anatolian Mountains Inferred from Ice flow Modelling

Climate change plays a fundamental role in the life cycle of glaciers. They melt under the current climatic crisis and contribute to the sea level rise. In order to know their current and past behaviours, they should be monitored or modelled under certain conditions. Reconstructions of past glaciers provide valuable information on future climate forecasts. Recent years have witnessed a growing academic interest in investigations of past glaciers and related climate data in Turkiye. Dating studies using cosmogenic isotopes is a key component of understanding the timing of paleoglaciers, especially for the Last Glacial Period (from 130k years earlier to 11k BP). Evidence from a number of dating studies has been established that these past glaciers in Anatolia have retreated from their maximum extents at 21ka to their minimal present conditions. The maximum glacier extent may have occurred much earlier in some regions in Turkiye, such as the Eastern Black Sea Mountains. The aim of this study is to develop a better understanding of the behaviour of glaciers in the Eastern Black Sea Mountains using physical based glacier modelling. We used the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) for paleoglacier reconstructions. The model's primary inputs are paleo- temperature and precipitation conditions. To do this, the current climatic conditions were used as a base pattern and modified to calculate the paleo- ice mass balance. The maximum extent of the modelling glaciers is compared with the proxies from previous studies conducted in the field. Here, we present the preliminary results of the effect of the paleoclimatic conditions on modelled glaciers, and how they behaved for 130ka under changing climatic conditions.