The relationship between water and air temperature in chironomid-based paleoclimate reconstructions: Records from boreal and subarctic Finland

2014

Fossil remains of larval chironomids are one of the most useful paleolimnological proxies to reconstruct Holocene paleoclimate. We investigate the within-lake distribution of chironomids in relation to water temperature and test the usability of intralake calibration in chironomid-based temperature reconstructions. We compare our findings against the traditional multilake calibration technique in Holocene sediment cores from Finland. The results show that intralake water temperature optima of common taxa correspond closely with mean July air temperature optima in a regional multilake dataset, with exception of a few vegetation-associated taxa. A calibration model based on intralake water t…