Western Mediterranean Climate Response to Dansgaard/Oeschger Events: New Insights From Speleothem Records
Abstract The climate of the western Mediterranean was characterized by a strong precipitation gradient during the Holocene driven by atmospheric circulation patterns. The scarcity of terrestrial paleoclimate archives has precluded exploring this hydroclimate pattern during Marine Isotope Stages 5 to...
Published in: | Geophysical Research Letters |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Wiley
2019
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084009 https://doaj.org/article/4eebb77176f34d51b70bcbc40e6a3a3d |
Summary: | Abstract The climate of the western Mediterranean was characterized by a strong precipitation gradient during the Holocene driven by atmospheric circulation patterns. The scarcity of terrestrial paleoclimate archives has precluded exploring this hydroclimate pattern during Marine Isotope Stages 5 to 3. Here we present stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from three flowstones from southeast Iberia, which show that Dansgaard/Oeschger events were associated with more humid conditions. This is in agreement with other records from the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and western Europe, which all responded in a similar way to millennial‐scale climate variability in Greenland. This general increase in precipitation during Dansgaard/Oeschger events cannot be explained by any present‐day or Holocene winter atmospheric circulation pattern. Instead, we suggest that changes in sea surface temperature played a dominant role in determining precipitation amounts in the western Mediterranean. |
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