Holocene Caribbean climate variability reconstructed from speleothems from western Cuba
Proxy records o ffer a high potential tool to investigate past climate variability. Stalagmites as a natural archive have the advantage that they are absolutely datable and past changes in precipitation or temperature can be highly resolved by the use of stable isotopes such as d18O and d13C. This s...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2011
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| Online Access: | https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/11621/ https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/11621/1/Dissertation_Claudia_Fensterer.pdf https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00011621 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-116210 |
| Summary: | Proxy records o ffer a high potential tool to investigate past climate variability. Stalagmites as a natural archive have the advantage that they are absolutely datable and past changes in precipitation or temperature can be highly resolved by the use of stable isotopes such as d18O and d13C. This study uses three stalagmites from north-western Cuba to investigate past precipitation variability in the Northern Caribbean. The records cover the whole Holocene and reveal variability on several time scales. Frequency analysis initially suggest solar forcing as a main driver, but it is shown that a high correlation to Northern Atlantic sea surface temperature, namely the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation, exist. This connection is visible on multidecadal as well as millennial time scales, i. e. the Bond cycles. During North Atlantic cold events, such as the Little Ice Age, the Bond events, the 8.2 ka event and the Younger Dryas, the Cuban records show drier conditions. A possible driver is the strength of the thermohaline circulation. If the thermohaline circulation is in a weaker phase, lower North Atlantic sea surface temperatures are possibly leading to a southward Inter-tropical convergence zone and drier conditions in Cuba. The records also reveal close connection to the Pacifi c El Nino-Southern Oscillation, which might be driven by the Atlantic itself. This study off ers the first continuous Holocene stalagmite records from the Caribbean region and further contribute to the understanding of Atlantic and Pacifi c teleconnections on Northern Caribbean climate variability during the Holocene. |
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