Abstract
Abstract. A combination of marine (Alboran Sea cores, ODP 976 and TTR 300 G) and terrestrial (Zoñar Lake, Andalucia, Spain) geochemical proxies provides a high-resolution reconstruction of climate variability and human influence in the southwestern Mediterranean region for the last 4000 years at inter-centennial resolution. Proxies respond to changes in precipitation rather than temperature alone. Our combined terrestrial and marine archive documents a succession of dry and wet periods coherent with the North Atlantic climate signal. A dry period occurred prior to 2.7 cal ka BP – synchronously to the global aridity crisis of the third-millennium BC – and during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (1.4–0.7 cal ka BP). Wetter conditions prevailed from 2.7 to 1.4 cal ka BP. Hydrological signatures during the Little Ice Age are highly variable but consistent with more humidity than the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Additionally, Pb anomalies in sediments at the end of the Bronze Age suggest anthropogenic pollution earlier than the Roman Empire development in the Iberian Peninsula. The Late Holocene climate evolution of the in the study area confirms the see-saw pattern between the eastern and western Mediterranean regions and the higher influence of the North Atlantic dynamics in the western Mediterranean.
Highlights
The southwestern Mediterranean region is an area of great interest for paleoclimate research, characterized by the interaction of the northern Africa subtropical and the midlatitude North Atlantic climate systems
The rapid response of lakes to changes in the environmental conditions together with relatively high sedimentation rates favor the preservation of high-resolution geochemical signals (Battarbee, 2000)
As we have shown above, our geochemical proxies for Alboran and Zonar are mostly driven by changes in precipitation, and, they are adequate to reconstruct changes in the Mediterranean area where during the last three millennia, humid conditions have been related to cooling phases in the northern-central Europe and the Mediterranean region (Magny, 2004; Mauquoy et al, 2008)
Summary
The southwestern Mediterranean region is an area of great interest for paleoclimate research, characterized by the interaction of the northern Africa subtropical and the midlatitude North Atlantic climate systems. Both influences have controlled climate variability since the onset of the modern Mediterranean climate after the mid Holocene and helped to create the unique environmental conditions that determine the landscape, biota and human societies evolution in this area. Geochemical archives encoded in marine and lacustrine sediments offer clues for reconstructing the environmental processes and past climate changes. The rapid response of lakes to changes in the environmental conditions together with relatively high sedimentation rates favor the preservation of high-resolution geochemical signals (Battarbee, 2000).
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