Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region
There has been considerable debate about the degree to which climate has driven societal changes in the eastern Mediterranean region, partly through reliance on a limited number of qualitative records of climate changes and partly reflecting the need to disentangle the joint impact of changes in dif...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:cp111206 2024-09-15T18:06:08+00:00 Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region Cruz-Silva, Esmeralda Harrison, Sandy P. Prentice, I. Colin Marinova, Elena Bartlein, Patrick J. Renssen, Hans Zhang, Yurui 2023-11-01 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/2093/2023/ eng eng doi:10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/2093/2023/ eISSN: 1814-9332 Text 2023 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 2024-08-28T05:24:15Z There has been considerable debate about the degree to which climate has driven societal changes in the eastern Mediterranean region, partly through reliance on a limited number of qualitative records of climate changes and partly reflecting the need to disentangle the joint impact of changes in different aspects of climate. Here, we use tolerance-weighted, weighted-averaging partial least squares to derive reconstructions of the mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO), mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA), growing degree days above a threshold of 0 ∘ C (GDD0), and plant-available moisture, which is represented by the ratio of modelled actual to equilibrium evapotranspiration ( α ) and corrected for past CO 2 changes. This is done for 71 individual pollen records from the eastern Mediterranean region covering part or all of the interval from 12.3 ka to the present. We use these reconstructions to create regional composites that illustrate the long-term trends in each variable. We compare these composites with transient climate model simulations to explore potential causes of the observed trends. We show that the glacial–Holocene transition and the early part of the Holocene was characterised by conditions colder than the present. Rapid increases in temperature occurred between ca. 10.3 and 9.3 ka, considerably after the end of the Younger Dryas. Although the time series are characterised by centennial to millennial oscillations, the MTCO showed a gradual increase from 9 ka to the present, consistent with the expectation that winter temperatures were forced by orbitally induced increases in insolation during the Holocene. The MTWA also showed an increasing trend from 9 ka and reached a maximum of ca. 1.5 ∘ C greater than the present at ca. 4.5 and 5 ka, followed by a gradual decline towards present-day conditions. A delayed response to summer insolation changes is likely a reflection of the persistence of the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets; subsequent summer cooling is consistent with the ... Text Fennoscandian Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Climate of the Past 19 11 2093 2108 |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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English |
description |
There has been considerable debate about the degree to which climate has driven societal changes in the eastern Mediterranean region, partly through reliance on a limited number of qualitative records of climate changes and partly reflecting the need to disentangle the joint impact of changes in different aspects of climate. Here, we use tolerance-weighted, weighted-averaging partial least squares to derive reconstructions of the mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO), mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA), growing degree days above a threshold of 0 ∘ C (GDD0), and plant-available moisture, which is represented by the ratio of modelled actual to equilibrium evapotranspiration ( α ) and corrected for past CO 2 changes. This is done for 71 individual pollen records from the eastern Mediterranean region covering part or all of the interval from 12.3 ka to the present. We use these reconstructions to create regional composites that illustrate the long-term trends in each variable. We compare these composites with transient climate model simulations to explore potential causes of the observed trends. We show that the glacial–Holocene transition and the early part of the Holocene was characterised by conditions colder than the present. Rapid increases in temperature occurred between ca. 10.3 and 9.3 ka, considerably after the end of the Younger Dryas. Although the time series are characterised by centennial to millennial oscillations, the MTCO showed a gradual increase from 9 ka to the present, consistent with the expectation that winter temperatures were forced by orbitally induced increases in insolation during the Holocene. The MTWA also showed an increasing trend from 9 ka and reached a maximum of ca. 1.5 ∘ C greater than the present at ca. 4.5 and 5 ka, followed by a gradual decline towards present-day conditions. A delayed response to summer insolation changes is likely a reflection of the persistence of the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets; subsequent summer cooling is consistent with the ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Cruz-Silva, Esmeralda Harrison, Sandy P. Prentice, I. Colin Marinova, Elena Bartlein, Patrick J. Renssen, Hans Zhang, Yurui |
spellingShingle |
Cruz-Silva, Esmeralda Harrison, Sandy P. Prentice, I. Colin Marinova, Elena Bartlein, Patrick J. Renssen, Hans Zhang, Yurui Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
author_facet |
Cruz-Silva, Esmeralda Harrison, Sandy P. Prentice, I. Colin Marinova, Elena Bartlein, Patrick J. Renssen, Hans Zhang, Yurui |
author_sort |
Cruz-Silva, Esmeralda |
title |
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
title_short |
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
title_full |
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
title_fullStr |
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
title_full_unstemmed |
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region |
title_sort |
pollen-based reconstructions of holocene climate trends in the eastern mediterranean region |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/2093/2023/ |
genre |
Fennoscandian |
genre_facet |
Fennoscandian |
op_source |
eISSN: 1814-9332 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/19/2093/2023/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023 |
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Climate of the Past |
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19 |
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11 |
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2093 |
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2108 |
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1810443631497052160 |