© Author(s) 2007. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Climate of the Past Spatial structure of the 8200 cal yr BP event in northern Europe

• Main Authors: H. J. B. Birks, T. Giesecke, D. Hammarlund, T. Alenius, K. Antonsson, A. E. Bjune, M. Heikkilä, G. M. Macdonald, A. E. K. Ojala, R. J. Telford, S. Veski
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Arctic; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.383.315; http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/80/76/PDF/cp-3-225-2007.pdf

Abstract. A synthesis of well-dated high-resolution pollen records suggests a spatial structure in the 8200 cal yr BP event in northern Europe. The temperate, thermophilous tree taxa, especially Corylus, Ulmus, and Alnus, decline abruptly between 8300 and 8000 cal yr BP at most sites located south of 61 ◦ N, whereas there is no clear change in pollen values at the sites located in the North-European tree-line region. Pollen-based quantitative temperature reconstructions and several other, independent palaeoclimate proxies, such as lacustrine oxygen-isotope records, reflect the same pattern, with no detectable cooling in the sub-arctic region. The observed patterns challenges the general view of the widespread occurrence of the 8200 cal yr BP event in the North Atlantic region. An alternative explanation is that the cooling during the 8200 cal yr BP event took place mostly during the