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The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Last Glacial Coldest Period, [1] was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period where ice sheets were at their greatest extent between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago. [2]
The Cordilleran ice sheet covered up to 1,500,000 square kilometres (580,000 sq mi) at the Last Glacial Maximum. [11] The eastern edge abutted the Laurentide ice sheet. The sheet was anchored in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, south into the Cascade Range of Washington. That is one and a half times the water held in the ...
An artist's impression of the last glacial period at glacial maximum [4]. The LGP is often colloquially referred to as the "last ice age", though the term ice age is not strictly defined, and on a longer geological perspective, the last few million years could be termed a single ice age given the continual presence of ice sheets near both poles.
The maximum ice extent occurred about 25,000–21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the Late Wisconsin in North America. The Last Glacial Period caused a much lower global sea level. This glaciation radically altered the geography north of the Ohio River, creating the Great Lakes.
The ice sheet covered up to 1,500,000 km 2 (580,000 sq mi) at the Last Glacial Maximum [2] and probably more than that in some previous periods, when it may have extended into the northeast extremity of Oregon and the Salmon River Mountains in Idaho.
The Last Glacial Maximum extent was first reached 22 ka BP in the southern boundary of the ice sheet in Denmark, Germany and Western Poland (Sławskie Lake District and Leszczyńskie Lake District). In Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Pskov Oblast in Russia the ice sheet reached its maximum extent about 19 ka BP.
The northern hemisphere was heavily impacted by ice sheets during the LGM. Some recent archaeological evidence suggests the possibility that human arrival in the Americas may have occurred prior to the Last Glacial Maximum more than 30,000 years ago. This evidence was found adjacent to ice sheets, [4] but research is still in an early stage.
From 1992 to 1996, the two ice sheets – which hold 99% of the world’s freshwater ice – were shrinking by 116 billion tons (105 billion metric tons) a year, two-thirds of it from Antarctica.