Climate Change During the Holocene (Past 12,000 Years)

This chapter summarises the climatic and environmental information that can be inferred from proxy archives over the past 12,000 years. The proxy archives from continental and lake sediments include pollen, insect remnants and isotopic data. Over the Holocene, the Baltic Sea area underwent major changes due to two interrelated factors—melting of the Fennoscandian ice sheet (causing interplay between global sea-level rise due to the meltwater and regional isostatic rebound of the earth’s crust causing a drop in relative sea level ) and changes in the orbital configuration of the Earth (triggering the glacial to interglacial transition and affecting incoming solar radiation and so controlling…