Abstract
Abstract. This article establishes a linkage between the mineral dust cycle and loess deposits during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in Europe. To this aim, we simulate the LGM dust cycle at high resolution using a regional climate–dust model. The model-simulated dust deposition rates are found to be comparable with the mass accumulation rates of the loess deposits determined from more than 70 sites. In contrast to the present-day prevailing westerlies, winds from northeast, east, and southeast (36 %) and cyclonic regimes (22 %) were found to prevail over central Europe during the LGM. This supports the hypothesis that the recurring east sector winds associated with a high-pressure system over the Eurasian ice sheet (EIS) dominated the dust transport from the EIS margins in eastern and central Europe. The highest dust emission rates in Europe occurred in summer and autumn. Almost all dust was emitted from the zone between the Alps, the Black Sea, and the southern EIS margin. Within this zone, the highest emission rates were located near the southernmost EIS margins corresponding to the present-day German–Polish border region. Coherent with the persistent easterlies, westward-running dust plumes resulted in high deposition rates in western Poland, northern Czechia, the Netherlands, the southern North Sea region, and on the North German Plain including adjacent regions in central Germany. The agreement between the climate model simulations and the mass accumulation rates of the loess deposits corroborates the proposed LGM dust cycle hypothesis for Europe.
Highlights
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 000±3000 years ago) is a milestone in the Earth’s climate, marking the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene (Clark et al, 2009; Hughes et al, 2015)
In line with previous modelling (COHMAP Members, 1988; Ludwig et al, 2016) and fieldwork studies (Dietrich and Seelos, 2010; Krauß et al, 2016; Römer et al, 2016), we hypothesize that east sector winds dominated the mineral dust cycle over central Europe during the LGM (Fig. 2). This hypothesis implies a linkage of dust sources in central and eastern Europe during the LGM and the loess deposits in Europe
The northeasters and easterlies originated most likely from dry winds that flowed down the slopes of the southern and eastern Eurasian ice sheet (EIS) margins, where they picked up and turned gradually into northeasters and easterlies
Summary
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 000±3000 years ago) is a milestone in the Earth’s climate, marking the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene (Clark et al, 2009; Hughes et al, 2015). For Europe, the global LGM simulations result in dust deposition rates (based on different particle size ranges) of less than 100 g m−2 yr−1 (Werner, 2002; Mahowald et al, 2006; Hopcroft et al, 2015; Sudarchikova et al, 2015; Albani et al, 2016) These are substantially smaller than the MARs (on average: 800 g m−2 yr−1) that have been reconstructed from more than 70 different loess sites across Europe (Supplement Table S1). This capacity of the WRF-Chem-LGM allows the reduction of the discrepancies between the MARs and the simulation-based dust deposition rates It enables the establishment of a linkage between the glacial dust cycle and the on-site loess deposits
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