0000000001327818
AUTHOR
Knut Jäger
A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception
How do ice ages begin? It's an obvious question to ask as we enjoy the relative luxury of an interglacial, but a hard one to answer. A look at past transitions may give some clues as to how this period will one day come to an end. A climate reconstruction based on sediments found beneath a lake in the Eifel mountains in Germany provides evidence of an extreme climate event lasting 468 years right at the end of the last interglacial. Dust storms, aridity, bushfires and the loss of trees associated with a warm climate coincided with a southward shift of the warm waters of the North Atlantic drift. In terms of insolation — the rate of delivery of the Sun's radiation to Earth — conditions then …
10. Holocene and Eemian varve types of Eifel maar lake sediments
Abstract Varves of the Holocene and of the last interglacial were investigated in two sediment sequences from Eifel maar lakes. The modern maar with Schalkenmehrener Maar Lake and the dry maar lake West Hoher List have the same size, are two kilometres apart at the same altitude, but the Eemian lake was much deeper. The sediments of both lakes are dominated by autochthonous sediments, mainly from diatom-dominated algae. Differences in the palaeoproductivity and in calcite precipitation are probably not climatically controlled but due to lake basin morphometry and the carbonate reservoir in the catchment areas. The occurrence of dry periods with aeolian dust deposition during the last interg…
Record of pollen, silt and greyscale stack from the Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive (ELSA)
Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate. A recent ice core from Greenland demonstrates climate cooling from 122,000 years ago driven by orbitally controlled insolation, with glacial inception at 118,000 years ago. Here we present an annually resolved, layer-counted record of varve thickness, quartz grain size and pollen assemblages from a maar lake in the Eifel (Germany), which documents a late Eemian aridity pulse lasting 468 years with dust storms, aridity, bushfire and a decline of thermophilous trees at the time of glacial inception. We inte…