The
Würm glaciation ( or
Würm-Glazial or
Würm stage, colloquially often also
Würmeiszeit oder
Würmzeit; c.f. ice age), in the literature usually just referred to as the
Würm, often spelt "Wurm", is the name given to the
last glacial period in the
Alpine region. It is the youngest of the major
glaciations of the region that extended beyond the Alps themselves. It is, like most of the other ice ages of the
Pleistocene epoch, named after a river, the
Würm in
Bavaria, a tributary of the
Amper. The Würm ice age can be dated to the time about 115,000 to 10,000 years ago, the sources differing depending on whether the long transition phases between the
glacials and
interglacials (warmer periods) are allocated to one or other of these periods. The
average annual temperatures during the Würm ice age in the
Alpine Foreland were below -3 °C (today +7 °C). This has been determined from changes in the vegetation (
pollen analysis) as well as differences in the
facies.