Search results for "climatology"
showing 10 items of 1164 documents
Erratum to “Palaeoecological context for the extinction of the Neanderthals: A small mammal study of Stratigraphic Unit V of the El Salt site, Alcoi,…
2021
El Salt is an important reference site for understanding the extinction of Neanderthal populations in the eastern Iberian Peninsula during MIS 3. In this paper, we describe the small mammal assemblage from Stratigraphic Unit V, the youngest unit with evidence of human presence, based on nearly 1300 specimens. A total of seven rodents (Microtus arvalis, Microtus duodecimcostatus, Microtus cabrerae, Sciurus vulgaris, Arvicola sapidus, Eliomys quercinus and Apodemus sylvaticus), three insectivores (Talpa occidentalis, Crocidura sp., Sorex sp.) and one lagomorph (Oryctolagus cf. cuniculus) were identified. Palaeocological analyses point to drier conditions in this part of the stratigraphic sequ…
Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia
2013
Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructi…
Rereading a tree-ring database to illustrate depositional histories of subfossil trees
2017
Late Quaternary tree-ring chronologies have been constructed using data collected from subfossil trees preserved under favourable conditions in lake sediments and peat deposits. Tree-ring widths and densities are commonly used for reconstructions of past climate variability. An alternative way of using these data is to explore the replication curves of these chronologies. Here, we make use of previously collected data that is currently available from tree-ring databases to demonstrate the depositional histories of pine trees once accumulated into the sediment in lake (i.e., riparian trees) and peatland sites. Divergent courses of depositional histories were obtained for different sedimentar…
The Uniqueness of Planktonic Ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea: The Response to Orbital- and Suborbital-Climatic Forcing over the Last 130,000 Years
2016
AbstractThe Mediterranean Sea is an ideal location to test the response of organisms to hydrological transformations driven by climate change. Here we review studies carried out on planktonic foraminifera and coccolithophores during the late Quaternary and attempt the comparison of data scattered in time and space. We highlight the prompt response of surface water ecosystems to both orbital- and suborbital-climatic variations.A markedly different spatial response was observed in calcareous plankton assemblages, possibly due to the influence of the North Atlantic climatic system in the western, central and northern areas and of the monsoon system in the easternmost and southern sites. Orbita…
Ammonite paleobiogeography during the Pliensbachian-Toarcian crisis (Early Jurassic) reflecting paleoclimate, eustasy, and extinctions.
2011
14 pages; International audience; The Pliensbachian-Toarcian crisis (Early Jurassic) is one of the major Mesozoic paleoecological disturbances when ca. 20% of marine and continental families went extinct. Contemporaneously, profound paleobiogeographical changes occurred in most oceanic domains including a disruption of ammonite provincialism during the Early Toarcian. Here, we quantitatively reappraise the structure and evolution of paleobiogeographical patterns displayed by ammonite faunas before, during, and after the biological crisis, over a time-interval including 13 biochronozones. The high-resolution study presented here involves the use of hierarchical Cluster Analyses, non-metric M…
A multiproxy study of Younger Dryas and Early Holocene climatic conditions from the Grabia River paleo-oxbow lake (central Poland)
2015
International audience; A multi-proxy reconstruction of water depth, temperature and precipitation inferred from Cladocera, Chironomidae and pollen assemblages has been obtained from Świerczyna paleo-oxbow (central Poland) during the Younger Dryas (YD) and Early Holocene. Results suggest that the YD was relatively cold and comprised two main phases. The first (ca. 12,500–12,000 cal. yrs BP) is characterized by a continental climatic regime and a decrease in winter temperatures and precipitation but an increase in spring/summer precipitation. The second phase (ca. 12,000–11,500 cal. yrs BP) was more mild with a variable continental climate, an increase in summer and winter temperature, a len…
Continental late Pliocene paleoclimatic history recorded in the Bresse Basin (France)
1992
International audience; We present results to show that the Beaune P & C borehole, cored in the Bresse Basin (France), records late Pliocene climatic variations. Pollen analysis allows precise correlations with northern and southern European stratigraphies. Using Kukla et al.'s (1981) climate index, we show that cold climate phases occur during the Brunssumian, at around 3.2, 3.6 and 5.2 Myr B.P., respectively, in agreement with Atlantic core results. The onset of a general cooling trend is felt early in the Reuverian, at about 3 Myr B.P. which corresponds to the end of a warm event characterized by high percentages of oak. This is followed by minor climatic pulses of increasing magnitude s…
Advances of sclerochronology research in the last decade
2021
Over the past decade, sclerochronological research has continued to develop rapidly and is diversifying with respect to methods, taxa, geographic coverage as well as temporal depth. Chonologically aligned environmental records from bivalves, gastropods, coralline algae, corals, and many other periodically formed biogenic hard parts are integrated to build networks across broad spatial domains and trophic levels. Replication and exact dating ensure that environmental signals are fully preserved and facilitate the integration among chronologies as well as observational records of climatic and biological phenomena. The proliferation of chronologies promises to usher in a new era of synthesis t…
The Last Deglaciation of the Southeastern Sector of Scandinavian Ice Sheet
2006
The Scandinavian Ice Sheet (SIS) was an important component of the global ice sheet system during the last glaciation, but the timing of its growth to or retreat from its maximum extent remains poorly known. We used 115 cosmogenic beryllium-10 ages and 70 radiocarbon ages to constrain the timing of three substantial ice-margin fluctuations of the SIS between 25,000 and 12,000 years before the present. The age of initial deglaciation indicates that the SIS may have contributed to an abrupt rise in global sea level. Subsequent ice-margin fluctuations identify opposite mass-balance responses to North Atlantic climate change, indicating differing ice-sheet sensitivities to mean climate state.
How warm? How wet? Hydroclimate reconstruction of the past 7500 years in northern Carpathians, Romania
2017
Abstract As natural and anthropogenic ecosystems are dependent on the local water availability, understanding past changes in hydroclimate represents a priority in research concerning past climate variability. Here, we used testate amoebae (TA) and chironomid analysis on a radiocarbon dated complex of small pond and peat bog sediment profiles from an ombrotrophic bog (Taul Muced, northern Carpathians, Romania) to quantitatively determine major hydrological changes and July air temperature over the last 7500 years. Wet mire surface conditions with a pH between 2.3 and 4.5 were inferred for the periods 4500–2700 and 1300–400 cal yr BP by the occurrence of Archerella flavum , Amphitrema wright…