A 10,700 years' paleotemperature record from Gotland and Pleistocene/Holocene boundary events in Sweden.

• Published in: Boreas
• Main Author: MÖRNER, NILS‐AXEL
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1980
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1502-3885.1980.tb00707.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1502-3885.1980.tb00707.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1502-3885.1980.tb00707.x

Lacustrine carbonate (Chara lime) from the Island of Gotland provides an excellent paleotemperature record for the last 10,700 years. From arctic conditions during the Younger Dryas Stadial, the temperature rapidly rose to the present level, which was reached at about 9000–9250 B.P. A Holocene climatic optimum is clearly recorded. It ended with a drastic deterioration at about 2500 B.P. at the Subboreal/Subatlantic transition. The Subatlantic temperatures are significantly lower than those of the climatic optimum. The Holocene of Sweden seems to have started with a tremendous earthquake linked to extensive faulting (explaining the inconsistencies in the sea level records and the ‘drainage of the Baltic Ice Lake’), a distinct peak in the non‐dipole geomagnetic field (explaining the intensity peak at this level in cores from different environments) and regional disturbancies of the sedimentation (explaining the ‘drainage varve’ character of varve ‐ 1073 in the Swedish Time Scale).