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RESEARCH PRODUCT
Western Mediterranean Climate Response to Dansgaard/Oeschger Events: New Insights From Speleothem Records
Regina Mertz-krausAlexander BudskyLuis GibertDenis ScholzChristoph SpötlJasper A. WassenburgKlaus Peter Jochumsubject
Mediterranean climategeographygeography.geographical_feature_categoryIsòtopsPrecipitacions (Meteorologia)Speleothem550 GeowissenschaftenPrecipitations (Meteorology)GeophysicsOceanography550 Earth sciencesIsotopesClima mediterraniGeneral Earth and Planetary SciencesMediterranean climateGeologydescription
The climate of the western Mediterranean was characterized by a strong precipitation gradient during the Holocene driven by atmospheric circulation patterns. The scarcity of terrestrial paleoclimate archives has precluded exploring this hydroclimate pattern during Marine Isotope Stages 5 to 3. Here we present stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from three flowstones from southeast Iberia, which show that Dansgaard/Oeschger events were associated with more humid conditions. This is in agreement with other records from the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and western Europe, which all responded in a similar way to millennial‐scale climate variability in Greenland. This general increase in precipitation during Dansgaard/Oeschger events cannot be explained by any present‐day or Holocene winter atmospheric circulation pattern. Instead, we suggest that changes in sea surface temperature played a dominant role in determining precipitation amounts in the western Mediterranean.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-01-01 |