Two Terrestrial Records of Rapid Climatic Change during the Glacial-Holocene Transition (14,000 - 9,000 Calendar Years B.P.) from Europe

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 97; no. 4; pp. 1390 - 1394
• Main Authors: Birks, Hilary H., Ammann, Brigitta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 15.02.2000; National Acad Sciences; National Academy of Sciences; The National Academy of Sciences
• Subjects: Calibration; Changes; Climate; Climate change; Climate models; Ecosystems; Geology; Giant squid; Ice ages; Paleoclimatology; Physical Sciences; Pollen; Radiocarbon; Rates of change; Terrestrial ecosystems; Younger Dryas period; Europe
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.97.4.1390

Two independent multidisciplinary studies of climatic change during the glacial-Holocene transition (ca. 14,000-9,000 calendar yr B.P.) from Norway and Switzerland have assessed organism responses to the rapid climatic changes and made quantitative temperature reconstructions with modern calibration data sets (transfer functions). Chronology at Krakenes, western Norway, was derived from calibration of a high-resolution series of14C dates. Chronologies at Gerzensee and Leysin, Switzerland, were derived by comparison of δ18O in lake carbonates with the δ18O record from the Greenland Ice Core Project. Both studies demonstrate the sensitivity of terrestrial and aquatic organisms to rapid temperature changes and their value for quantitative reconstruction of the magnitudes and rates of the climatic changes. The rates in these two terrestrial records are comparable to those in Greenland ice cores, but the actual temperatures inferred apply to the terrestrial environments of the two regions.