Search

The timing and rate of ecosystem response to abrupt climate change is a product of numerous complex interactions between biotic and abiotic drivers. Palaeoecological studies from long sedimentary records, particularly those that span periods of dynamic climate such as the last glacial cycle, can help to contextualise ecosystem responses to climate variability through time. Detailed studies that compare proxy data from multiple sites, with high chronological precision, have the potential to ascribe mutual climate drivers, and, therefore, track spatiotemporal variability in ecosystem responses. Here, we interrogate the vegetation impact of past climate change in the eastern Mediterranean, using three sub-centennially resolved pollen archives from Greece. The widespread Campanian Ignimbrite (CI/Y-5; ca. 39.85 ka BP) tephra marker is used as an isochron to directly correlate pollen records from Ioannina (NW Greece), Tenaghi Philippon (NE Greece), and Megali Limni (NE Aegean). Our results reveal spatiotemporal variability in the timing of vegetation response in the Mediterranean to climate forcing across Heinrich Stadial 4 (40.2–38.3 ka BP), a period of known abrupt climatic change. We identify a decline in tree pollen in all three sites, likely related to the onset of enhanced regional aridity, with vegetation at Tenaghi Philippon responding prior to the CI/Y-5, in contrast to at Megali Limni and Ioannina, where much of the vegetation change occurs following tephra deposition. • The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI/Y-5) tephra marker is used to interrogate the timing of vegetation response to HS4. • The timing of tree pollen minima across HS4 varies between three centennial-scale pollen records. • Temporal offsets may reflect site-specific characteristics and/or the fast and slow components of millennial-scale change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Neogene and Quaternary are characterized by enormous changes in global climate and environments, including global cooling and the establishment of northern high-latitude glaciers. These changes reshaped global ecosystems, including the emergence of tropical dry forests and savannahs that are found in Africa today, which in turn may have influenced the evolution of humans and their ancestors. However, despite decades of research we lack long, continuous, well-resolved records of tropical climate, ecosystem changes, and surface processes necessary to understand their interactions and influences on evolutionary processes. Lake Tanganyika, Africa, contains the most continuous, long continental climate record from the mid-Miocene (∼10 Ma) to the present anywhere in the tropics and has long been recognized as a top-priority site for scientific drilling. The lake is surrounded by the Miombo woodlands, part of the largest dry tropical biome on Earth. Lake Tanganyika also harbors incredibly diverse endemic biota and an entirely unexplored deep microbial biosphere, and it provides textbook examples of rift segmentation, fault behavior, and associated surface processes. To evaluate the interdisciplinary scientific opportunities that an ICDP drilling program at Lake Tanganyika could offer, more than 70 scientists representing 12 countries and a variety of scientific disciplines met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in June 2019. The team developed key research objectives in basin evolution, source-to-sink sedimentology, organismal evolution, geomicrobiology, paleoclimatology, paleolimnology, terrestrial paleoecology, paleoanthropology, and geochronology to be addressed through scientific drilling on Lake Tanganyika. They also identified drilling targets and strategies, logistical challenges, and education and capacity building programs to be carried out through the project. Participants concluded that a drilling program at Lake Tanganyika would produce the first continuous Miocene–present record from the tropics, transforming our understanding of global environmental change, the environmental context of human origins in Africa, and providing a detailed window into the dynamics, tempo and mode of biological diversification and adaptive radiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of regional variations in response to abrupt climatic transitions is essential to understanding the climate system and anticipating future changes. Global climate models typically assume that major climatic changes occur synchronously over continental to hemispheric distances. The last major reorganization of the ocean-atmosphere system in the North Atlantic realm took place during the Younger Dryas (YD), an ~1100 yr cold period at the end of the last glaciation. Within this region, several terrestrial records of the YD show at least two phases, an initial cold phase followed by a second phase of climatic amelioration related to a resumption of North Atlantic overturning. We show that the onset of climatic amelioration during the YD cold period was locally abrupt, but timetransgressive across Europe. Atmospheric proxy signals record the resumption of thermohaline circulation midway through the Younger Dryas, occurring 100 yr before deposition of ash from the Icelandic Vedde eruption in a German varve lake record, and 20 yr after the same isochron in western Norway, 1350 km farther north. Synchronization of two high-resolution continental records, using the Vedde Ash layer (12,140 ± 40 varve yr B.P.), allows us to trace the shifting of the polar front as a major control of regional climate amelioration during the YD in the North Atlantic realm. It is critical that future climate models are able to resolve such small spatial and chronological differences in order to properly encapsulate complex regional responses to global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The INTIMATE protocol for the correlation of marine ice core and terrestrial records is here updated, reflecting recent developments in palaeoclimate research. Originally focussed on Last Glacial to Interglacial Transition (LGIT: 22,000–11,500 years B.P.), the INTIMATE group has now extended its study period back to 60,000 years. As a first step, the INTIMATE event stratigraphy has now been extended to include 8000–48,000 b2k based on a combined NGRIP and GRIP isotope profile against a GICC05 chronology and key tephra horizons from Iceland and continental European volcanic sources. In this lead article of this INTIMATE special issue we introduce some of the recent achievements of the INTIMATE community and discuss the challenges associated with extending the INTIMATE approach back in time, focussing in particular on the chronological problems inherent in comparing different proxy records. The INTIMATE approach has thus far been limited predominantly to the North Atlantic and Australasian regions and we also discuss the potential to extend the INTIMATE protocol beyond these regions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Three cryptotephra layers associated with important periods of climatic change were identified in the Middle Palaeolithic sequence of Theopetra Cave, Greece. The lower cryptotephra layer, THP-TII5, is correlated with the P-11 Pantellerian eruption dated to ∼128–131 ka. This cryptotephra postdates a thick sequence of combustion layers that show a complex vegetation succession quite similar to that of the last deglaciation succession in the cave. Two other cryptotephras, THP-TII10 and THP-TII12, are correlated with the Nisyros Upper Pumice and the Pantellerian Y6/Green Tuff, dated to >50 ka and 45.7 ka, respectively. This sequence confirms the position of the Nisyros Upper tephra, below the Pantellerian Green Tuff, in the volcanic event stratigraphy of the Mediterranean. Moreover, these two upper cryptotephras bracket an extended combustion layer with interstadial vegetation characteristics that may be coincident with the complex Greenland Interstadial 13–14. On the basis of this new chronology it can be deduced that the intensity of occupation and presence or absence of humans in the cave were closely related to climatic changes. In addition, a remarkable similarity in the pattern of occupational intensity during the last two deglaciations can be suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparison of palaeoclimate records on their own independent timescales is central to the work of the INTIMATE (INTegrating Ice core, MArine and TErrestrial records) network. For the North Atlantic region, an event stratigraphy has been established from the high-precision Greenland ice-core records and the integrated GICC05 chronology. This stratotype provides a palaeoclimate signal to which the timing and nature of palaeoenvironmental change recorded in marine and terrestrial archives can be compared. To facilitate this wider comparison, without assuming synchroneity of climatic change/proxy response, INTIMATE has also focussed on the development of tools to achieve this. In particular the use of time-parallel marker horizons e.g. tephra layers (volcanic ash). Coupled with the recent temporal extension of the Greenland stratotype, as part of this special issue, we present an updated INTIMATE event stratigraphy highlighting key tephra horizons used for correlation across Europe and the North Atlantic. We discuss the advantages of such an approach, and the key challenges for the further integration of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental records with those from ice cores and the marine realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]