Climate Variability in Central Europe during the Last 2500 Years Reconstructed from Four High-Resolution Multi-Proxy Speleothem Records

The Late Holocene was characterized by several centennial-scale climate oscillations including the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The detection and investigation of such climate anomalies requires paleoclimate archives with an accurate chronology as well as a high temporal resolution. Here, we present 230Th/U-dated high-resolution multi-proxy records (δ13C, δ18O and trace elements) for the last 2500 years of four speleothems from Bunker Cave and the Herbstlabyrinth cave system in Germany. The multi-proxy data of all four speleothems show evidence of two warm and two cold phases during the last 2500 years, which coincide with the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, as well as the Dark Ages Cold Period and the Little Ice Age, respectively. During these four cold and warm periods, the δ18O and δ13C records of all four speleothems and the Mg concentration of the speleothems Bu4 (Bunker Cave) and TV1 (Herbstlabyrinth cave system) show common features and are thus interpreted to be related to past climate variability. Comparison with other paleoclimate records suggests a strong influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation at the two caves sites, which is reflected by warm and humid conditions during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, and cold and dry climate during the Dark Ages Cold period and the Little Ice Age. The Mg records of speleothems Bu1 (Bunker Cave) and NG01 (Herbstlabyrinth) as well as the inconsistent patterns of Sr, Ba and P suggests that the processes controlling the abundance of these trace elements are dominated by site-specific effects rather than being related to supra-regional climate variability.

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Signals of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from southwestern Madhya Pradesh (India): A pollen-inferred Late-Holocene vegetation and climate change

Quaternary International ◽

10.1016/j.quaint.2013.07.011 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 325 ◽

pp. 74-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

M.F. Quamar ◽

M.S. Chauhan

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Late Holocene ◽

Medieval Warm Period ◽

Madhya Pradesh ◽

Warm Period ◽

Ice Age ◽

Vegetation And Climate

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Vegetation changes in the Hotyn Upland over the last 2000 years (based on pollen data)

Journal of Geology Geography and Geoecology ◽

10.15421/111906 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 51-58 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

N. Gerasimenko ◽

T. Yurchenko ◽

Ye. Rohozin

Keyword(s):

Little Ice Age ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Medieval Warm Period ◽

Warm Period ◽

Ice Age ◽

Humid Climate ◽

Cool Period ◽

Surface Samples ◽

Pollen Surface ◽

Short Period

Pollen study of two soil sections, located in two different relief positions (the gully bottom at Sadgora 1 and the upper part of a slope at Ridkivtsi I) enables us to show vegetational and climatic changes in the Bukovyna area (the Chernivtsi region) during the last 2000 years (the end of the Early Subatlantic, the Middle and Late Subatlantic). The reconstructions of past vegetation are based on the analyses of pollen surface samples, taken from the soils of different ecotops in the sites’ vicinity. The reconstructed short-period phases of environmental change correspond well with those established in other areas. These are the end of the “Roman warm period” (before the 14C date of 1.74 ka BP), with the humid climate; the relatively dry “Dark Ages cool period” (before the 14C date of 1.19 ka BP); the wet “Medieval warm period”; the cool “Little Ice Age” (with its wetter beginning and drier ending) and the modern warm phase (the last 150 years).Centennial environmental changes − the cooling within the Medieval Warming (XI cent.) and the warming within the “Little Ice Age” (XV cent.) – have been detected. Human impact on the vegetation can be demonstrated – forest clearance (with the presence of particles of microscopic charcoal and pollen of pyrophitic plants), the introduction of thermophilous walnut during warm periods, and the appearance of pasture lands in the place of former fern patches and woods during the “Little Ice Age”, and the last warm phase (with the presence of pollen of pastoral synanthropic plants). In the last 2000 years, broad-leaved woodland, dominated by hornbeam, grew extensively near Sadgora and Ridkivtsi only during the “Medieval Warm Period”.

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Late Holocene climate variability in the southwestern Mediterranean region: an integrated marine and terrestrial geochemical approach

Climate of the Past Discussions ◽

10.5194/cpd-6-1655-2010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 6 (5) ◽

pp. 1655-1683 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

C. Martín-Puertas ◽

F. Jiménez-Espejo ◽

F. Martínez-Ruiz ◽

V. Nieto-Moreno ◽

M. Rodrigo ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Variability ◽

North Atlantic ◽

Little Ice Age ◽

Mediterranean Region ◽

Late Holocene ◽

Western Mediterranean ◽

Warm Period ◽

Ice Age ◽

The North ◽

The North Atlantic

Abstract. A combination of marine (Alboran Sea cores, ODP 976 and TTR 300 G) and terrestrial (Zoñar Lake, Andalucia, Spain) paleoclimate information using geochemical proxies provides a high resolution reconstruction of climate variability and human influence in southwestern Mediterranean region for the last 4000 years at inter-centennial resolution. Proxies respond to changes in precipitation rather than temperature alone. Our archive documents a succession of dry and wet periods coherent with the North Atlantic climate signal. Drier stages occurred prior to 2.7 cal ka BP, well-correlated with the global aridity crisis of the third-millennium BC, and during the Medieval Warm Period (1.4–0.7 cal ka BP). Wetter conditions prevailed from 2.7 to 1.4 cal ka BP and after the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the Little Ice Age. Hydrological signatures during the Little Ice Age are highly variable but consistent with more humidity that the period before. Additionally, Pb anomalies in sediments at the end of Bronze Age suggest anthropogenic pollution earlier than the Roman Empire development in the Iberian Peninsula. The evolution of the climate in the study area during the Late Holocene confirms the see-saw pattern previously shown between eastern and western Mediterranean regions and suggests a higher influence of the North Atlantic dynamics in the western Mediterranean.

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