Abstract
AbstractThe climate of the western Mediterranean was characterized by a strong precipitation gradient during the Holocene driven by atmospheric circulation patterns. The scarcity of terrestrial paleoclimate archives has precluded exploring this hydroclimate pattern during Marine Isotope Stages 5 to 3. Here we present stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from three flowstones from southeast Iberia, which show that Dansgaard/Oeschger events were associated with more humid conditions. This is in agreement with other records from the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and western Europe, which all responded in a similar way to millennial‐scale climate variability in Greenland. This general increase in precipitation during Dansgaard/Oeschger events cannot be explained by any present‐day or Holocene winter atmospheric circulation pattern. Instead, we suggest that changes in sea surface temperature played a dominant role in determining precipitation amounts in the western Mediterranean.
Highlights
During the last glacial period, global climate underwent a series of rapid changes superimposed on a long‐ term cooling trend (Deplazes et al, 2013; Martrat et al, 2007; North Greenland Ice Core Project members, 2004; Wang et al, 2008)
We present stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from three flowstones from southeast Iberia, which show that Dansgaard/Oeschger events were associated with more humid conditions
This is in agreement with other records from the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, and western Europe, which all responded in a similar way to millennial‐scale climate variability in Greenland
Summary
During the last glacial period, global climate underwent a series of rapid changes superimposed on a long‐ term cooling trend (Deplazes et al, 2013; Martrat et al, 2007; North Greenland Ice Core Project members, 2004; Wang et al, 2008). Greenland ice core records show large, rapid changes in δ18O values interpreted as changes in temperature (Johnsen et al, 2001; Wolff et al, 2010) This climate variability on millennial timescales with warm Dansgaard/Oeschger (D/O) events— referred to as Greenland Interstadials (Dansgaard et al, 1993)—and Greenland stadials (Hemming, 2004) is reflected in marine sediment cores from the North Atlantic (Heinrich, 1988; Hemming, 2004; Martrat et al, 2007) as well as the Mediterranean Sea (Cacho et al, 1999; Frigola et al, 2012; Incarbona et al, 2013; Martrat et al, 2004). The AMOC has a large impact on sea surface temperatures (SST) in the North Atlantic (Pailler & Bard, 2002) as well as the western Mediterranean Sea
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