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www.clim-past-discuss.net/6/1655/2010/
doi:10.5194/cpd-6-1655-2010
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under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Late Holocene climate variability in the southwestern Mediterranean region: an integrated marine and terrestrial geochemical approach
1German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ), Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
2Facultad de Ciencias, Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, Campus Fuentenueva, 18002 Granada, Spain
3Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Área de cambio global. C/La Calera, 28760, Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain
4Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Apdo 13034, 50080, Zaragoza, Spain
Abstract. A combination of marine (Alboran Sea cores, ODP 976 and TTR 300 G) and terrestrial (Zoñar Lake, Andalucia, Spain) paleoclimate information using geochemical proxies provides a high resolution reconstruction of climate variability and human influence in southwestern Mediterranean region for the last 4000 years at inter-centennial resolution. Proxies respond to changes in precipitation rather than temperature alone. Our archive documents a succession of dry and wet periods coherent with the North Atlantic climate signal. Drier stages occurred prior to 2.7 cal ka BP, well-correlated with the global aridity crisis of the third-millennium BC, and during the Medieval Warm Period (1.4–0.7 cal ka BP). Wetter conditions prevailed from 2.7 to 1.4 cal ka BP and after the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the Little Ice Age. Hydrological signatures during the Little Ice Age are highly variable but consistent with more humidity that the period before. Additionally, Pb anomalies in sediments at the end of Bronze Age suggest anthropogenic pollution earlier than the Roman Empire development in the Iberian Peninsula. The evolution of the climate in the study area during the Late Holocene confirms the see-saw pattern previously shown between eastern and western Mediterranean regions and suggests a higher influence of the North Atlantic dynamics in the western Mediterranean.
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Notice on Discussion StatusCitation: Martín-Puertas, C., Jiménez-Espejo, F., Martínez-Ruiz, F., Nieto-Moreno, V., Rodrigo, M., Mata, M. P., and Valero-Garcés, B. L.: Late Holocene climate variability in the southwestern Mediterranean region: an integrated marine and terrestrial geochemical approach, Clim. Past Discuss., 6, 1655-1683, doi:10.5194/cpd-6-1655-2010, 2010. Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager XML
