List all countries that supported ice sheets or mountain glaciers during the pleistocene glaciations, including countries that still are glaciated.
Countries are split into two categories, continental, for countries with extensive ice sheets at or near sea level, and mountain, for countries that only supported ice sheets on mountaintops. Countries marked as continental often have mountain glaciers as well
Answers marked with a question mark are sources of debate, or scientists think that glaciation is plausible, but there have been no in depth surveys to confirm
The continent is the continent in which glaciers could be found, not the continent of the country as a whole. Overseas territories are not included..
There seem to have been a series of studies going back and forth relating to there possibly having been a few tiny glaciers in the high mountains of the Dominican Republic.
Panama has terrain at similar elevations to formerly glaciated terrain in Costa Rica, leading scientists to think there might have been some small ones, but there has been no real search for glaciated landforms.
There is some fairly weak evidence for small glaciers in the Drakensburg of Lesotho, in the highest elevations of Yemen, and maybe on Mount Cameroon, or Sudan, though I was unable to find the original study for this, only secondary ones mentioning that it was a possibility.
I did find a study covering glaciation on Mount Hermon, which is shared between Lebanon, Syria, and maybe Israel. The location of these glaciers is not entirely clear from the paper. I guess they are probably in Lebanon, given that the Lebanese side is wetter, but I was not able to confirm.
To continue, The Israeli claims stop several thousand feet short of the summit, well below the described physical limits of the Mount Hermon glaciers. Lebanon is not marked with a question mark as Mount Lebanon, fully in Lebanon, has pretty clear glaciation.
Finally, North Korea. For obvious reasons, I was unable to find papers on pleistocene glaciation there. It is the only one that I based off of what I could personally find on google maps. I was able to find what look like textbook glacial cirques in the Hamyong Mountains of North Korea, so I interpreted those as originating in the Pleistocene. I might be mistaken, so this one is marked with a question mark. If anyone wants to check, there are three "cirque" features roughly a kilometer northwest of Kwanmo Peak
Great catch. Honestly a little embarrassing that I was able to find info on glaciation in places like the Dominican Republic, but forgot to include those countries, both of which should have been glaciated at least in part.
I don't think I had a single main source for this. I used a glaciology textbook (Bennet and Glasser, Glacial Geology), the wikipedia page on the last glacial maximum, along with an older Quaternary Geology text I found for the basics, then mostly just searched countries individually in Google Scholar, looking for the keywords "Pleistocene last glacial maximum glaciation COUNTRY" and then adding countries based on what I could find there.
As far as specific sources go:
For Pleistocene glaciation in Africa. I used Groos et al 2021,
Great quiz. But I am sure that there were glaciers in the Netherlands too during the Saale glaciation --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saale_glaciation
Hmm. My missing the Netherlands is probably an artifact of assuming that the LGM was the maximum extent of glaciation worldwide. I knew it wasn't for the US, the Nebraskan and Kansan glaciations were both more extensive, but never made the connection for the rest of the world.
There seem to have been a series of studies going back and forth relating to there possibly having been a few tiny glaciers in the high mountains of the Dominican Republic.
Panama has terrain at similar elevations to formerly glaciated terrain in Costa Rica, leading scientists to think there might have been some small ones, but there has been no real search for glaciated landforms.
There is some fairly weak evidence for small glaciers in the Drakensburg of Lesotho, in the highest elevations of Yemen, and maybe on Mount Cameroon, or Sudan, though I was unable to find the original study for this, only secondary ones mentioning that it was a possibility.
I did find a study covering glaciation on Mount Hermon, which is shared between Lebanon, Syria, and maybe Israel. The location of these glaciers is not entirely clear from the paper. I guess they are probably in Lebanon, given that the Lebanese side is wetter, but I was not able to confirm.
Finally, North Korea. For obvious reasons, I was unable to find papers on pleistocene glaciation there. It is the only one that I based off of what I could personally find on google maps. I was able to find what look like textbook glacial cirques in the Hamyong Mountains of North Korea, so I interpreted those as originating in the Pleistocene. I might be mistaken, so this one is marked with a question mark. If anyone wants to check, there are three "cirque" features roughly a kilometer northwest of Kwanmo Peak
As far as specific sources go:
For Pleistocene glaciation in Africa. I used Groos et al 2021,
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abb6826
This paper focuses on E. Africa specifically, and makes vague references to other parts of Africa
I am pretty sure I used (Sarikaya and Ciner 2015) for Lebanon, Syria, Israel etc.
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1144/sp433.4
I believe I used the below paper for Central America
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1571086604801180
(Lachniet, 2004)
Malaysia
(Stauffer, 1968)
https://archives.datapages.com/data/geological-society-of-malaysia/bulletins/001/001001/pdfs/63.htm
Papua New Guinea
Barrow et al 2011.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379111001685
Dominican Republic, (Schubert and Medina 1982)
Evidence of Quaternary glaciation in the Dominican Republic: Some implications for Caribbean paleoclimatology
This one seems to be pretty controversial, as I was able to find other papers disagreeing with it.
Taiwan
(Cui et al 2002)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618202000605