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The sediment profile from Lake Gościąż in central Poland comprises a continuous, seasonally resolved and exceptionally well‐preserved archive of the Younger Dryas (YD) climate variation. This provides a unique opportunity for detailed investigation of lake system responses during periods of rapid climate cooling (YD onset) and warming (YD termination). The new varve record of Lake Gościąż presented here spans 1662 years from the late Allerød (AL) to the early Preboreal (PB). Microscopic varve counting provides an independent chronology with a YD duration of 1149+14/–22 years, which confirms previous results of 1140±40 years. We link stable oxygen isotopes and chironomid‐based air temperature reconstructions with the response of various geochemical and varve microfacies proxies especially focusing on the onset and termination of the YD. Cooling at the YD onset lasted ~180 years, which is about a century longer than the terminal warming that was completed in ~70 years. During the AL/YD transition, environmental proxy data lagged the onset of cooling by ~90 years and revealed an increase of lake productivity and internal lake re‐suspension as well as slightly higher detrital sediment input. In contrast, rapid warming and environmental changes during the YD/PB transition occurred simultaneously. However, initial changes such as declining diatom deposition and detrital input occurred already a few centuries before the rapid warming at the YD/PB transition. These environmental changes likely reflect a gradual increase in summer air temperatures already during the YD. Our data indicate complex and differing environmental responses to the major climate changes related to the YD, which involve different proxy sensitivities and threshold processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a multi‐proxy record from Lake Kotokel in the Baikal region at decadal‐to‐multidecadal resolution and provides a reconstruction of terrestrial and aquatic environments in the area during a 2000‐year interval of globally harsh climate often referred to as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The studied lake is situated near the eastern shoreline of Lake Baikal, in a climatically sensitive zone that hosts boreal taiga and cold deciduous forests, cold steppe associations typical for northern Mongolia, and mountain tundra vegetation. The results provide a detailed picture of the period in focus, indicating (i) a driest phase (c. 24.0–23.4 cal. ka BP) with low precipitation, high summer evaporation, and low lake levels, (ii) a transitional interval of unstable conditions (c. 23.4–22.6 cal. ka BP), and (iii) a phase (c. 22.6–22.0 cal. ka BP) of relatively high precipitation (and moisture availability) and relatively high lake levels. One hotly debated issue in late Quaternary research is regional summer thermal conditions during the LGM. Our chironomid‐based reconstruction suggests at least 3.5 °C higher than present summer temperatures between c. 22.6 and 22.0 cal. ka BP, which are well in line with warmer and wetter conditions in the North Atlantic region inferred from Greenland ice‐cores. Overall, it appears that environments in central Eurasia during the LGM were affected by much colder than present winter temperatures and higher than present summer temperatures, although the effects of temperature oscillations were strongly influenced by changes in humidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lauterbach, S., Brauer, A., Andersen, N., Danielopol, D. L., Dulski, P., Hüls, M., Milecka, K., Namiotko, T., Plessen, B., von Grafenstein, U. & DecLakes participants 2010: Multi-proxy evidence for early to mid-Holocene environmental and climatic changes in northeastern Poland. Boreas, 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2010.00159.x. ISSN 0300-9483. We investigated the sedimentary record of Lake Hańcza (northeastern Poland) using a multi-proxy approach, focusing on early to mid-Holocene climatic and environmental changes. AMS C dating of terrestrial macrofossils and sedimentation rate estimates from occasional varve thickness measurements were used to establish a chronology. The onset of the Holocene at c. 11 600 cal. a BP is marked by the decline of Lateglacial shrub vegetation and a shift from clastic-detrital deposition to an autochthonous sedimentation dominated by biochemical calcite precipitation. Between 10 000 and 9000 cal. a BP, a further environmental and climatic improvement is indicated by the spread of deciduous forests, an increase in lake organic matter and a 1.7‰ rise in the oxygen isotope ratios of both endogenic calcite and ostracod valves. Rising δO values were probably caused by a combination of hydrological and climatic factors. The persistence of relatively cold and dry climate conditions in northeastern Poland during the first one and a half millennia of the Holocene could be related to a regional eastern European atmospheric circulation pattern. Prevailing anticyclonic circulation linked to a high-pressure cell above the retreating Scandinavian Ice Sheet might have blocked the influence of warm and moist Westerlies and attenuated the early Holocene climatic amelioration in the Lake Hańcza region until the final decay of the ice sheet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]