Chasing the elusive glacial expansion during the LGM and Late-glacial in the mountains of Greece

A key to address long-standing questions regarding underlying climate change mechanisms in the Mediterranean, such as timing and amplitude of precipitation variability, is a multiproxy record (e.g. pollen, glacial, marine sediment records), which covers multiple glacial–interglacial cycles and is sensitive to regional changes in the hydroclimate. As mountain glaciers change volume in response to climatic changes, their former extents record past changes in climate, providing data on how patterns of ice distribution have varied spatially with time. Mapping and dating of past ice margins, documented by terrestrial glaciogenic sediments and landforms, provide valuable information to gain a better understanding of landscape evolution. In order to juxtapose palaeoglaciers in different geographical settings, a useful tool is the Equilibrium Line Altitude (ELA), which marks the area of a glacier where annual accumulation and ablation are equal and is governed by air temperature and precipitation.