Abstract
The deposits and landforms of the glaciers in the Southern Alps of New Zealand provide a complex record of late Quaternary ice advance linked to global climate events, and associated sedimentary sequences provide evidence for comparing terrestrial changes in S New Zealand with marine and Antarctic records. A moraine-impounded peat bog, > 10 m deep at Okarito Pakihi, situated outside the limit of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ice advance on the West Coast of South Island, was sampled by drilling. The succession comprised lower laminated organic silty sands and upper dark brown organic units which were dated by the (super 14) C and luminescence methods, giving a mean age of 127 + or - 29 kyr for the lower laminated unit and indicating its deposition during the later stages of the Last Interglacial. With independently dated pollen records from this peat bog section, the results mainly corroborate the last Milankovitch model of orbital forcing, though an earlier onset and longer duration of the LGM is suggested. Regional insolation variation may, however, have played a greater role in climate change than previously recognized, and may provide an alternative to the bi-polar 'seesaw' to explain differences in inter-hemisphere climate records.