Highlight articles

Interactions between climate change and human activities during the early to mid-Holocene in the eastern Mediterranean basins

This paper focuses on early Holocene rapid climate changes in the Mediterranean zone, which are under-represented in continental archives, and on their impact on prehistoric societies from the eastern to central Mediterranean (central Anatolia, Cyprus, NE and NW Greece). Our study demonstrates the reality of hydrogeomorphological responses to early Holocene RCCs in valleys and alluvial fans and lake–marsh systems. We finally question their socio-economic and geographical adaptation capacities.

The PRISM4 (mid-Piacenzian) paleoenvironmental reconstruction

Past intervals in Earth history provide unique windows into conditions much different than those observed today. We investigated the paleoenvironments of a past warm interval (~ 3 million years ago). Our reconstruction includes data sets for surface temperature, vegetation, soils, lakes, ice sheets, topography, and bathymetry. These data are being used along with global climate models to expand our understanding of the climate system and to help us prepare for future changes.

Impacts of Tibetan Plateau uplift on atmospheric dynamics and associated precipitation δ18O

We use an isotope-equipped GCM and develop original theoretical expression for the precipitation composition to assess δ¹⁸O of paleo-precipitation changes with the Tibetan Plateau uplift. We show that δ¹⁸O of precipitation is very sensitive to climate changes related to the growth of mountains, notably changes in relative humidity and precipitation amount. Topography is shown to be not an exclusive controlling factor δ¹⁸O in precipitation that have crucial consequences for paleoelevation studies.

A Late Pleistocene sea level stack

This study presents an average of seven Late Pleistocene sea level records, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio for estimates of sea level change during glacial cycles of the past 800 000 years.

The link between marine sediment records and changes in Holocene Saharan landscape: simulating the dust cycle

We demonstrate for the first time the direct link between dust accumulation in marine sediment cores and Saharan land surface by simulating the mid-Holocene and pre-industrial dust cycle as a function of Saharan land surface cover and atmosphere-ocean conditions using the coupled atmosphere-aerosol model ECHAM6-HAM2.1. Mid-Holocene surface characteristics, including vegetation cover and lake surface area, are derived from proxy data and simulations.

Solar modulation of flood frequency in central Europe during spring and summer on interannual to multi-centennial timescales

Integrating discharge data of the River Ammer back to 1926 and a 5500-year flood layer record from an annually laminated sediment core of the downstream Ammersee allowed investigating changes in the frequency of major floods in Central Europe on interannual to multi-centennial timescales. Significant correlations between flood frequency variations in both archives and changes in the activity of the Sun suggest a solar influence on the frequency of these hydrometeorological extremes.

Continental-scale temperature variability in PMIP3 simulations and PAGES 2k regional temperature reconstructions over the past millennium

A comparison of model simulations and reconstructions at the continental scale over the past millennium indicates that models are in relatively good agreement with temperature reconstructions for Northern Hemisphere regions, particularly in the Arctic. This is likely due to the relatively large amplitude of the externally forced response across northern and high-latitudes regions. Conversely, models disagree strongly with the reconstructions in the Southern Hemisphere.

PAGES 2k regional temperature reconstructions over the past millennium">Read more

Technical Note: How accurate can stalagmite formation temperatures be determined using vapour bubble radius measurements in fluid inclusions?

Fluid inclusions inside stalagmites retain information on the cave temperature at the time they formed and thus can be used to reconstruct the continental climate of the past. A method for extracting this information based on a thermodynamic model and size measurements of femtosecond-laser-induced vapour bubbles is presented. Applying our method to stalagmites taken from the Milandre cave in the Swiss Jura Mountains demonstrate that palaeotemperatures can be determined with an accuracy of ±1°C.

Twelve thousand years of dust: the Holocene global dust cycle constrained by natural archives

We propose an innovative framework to organize paleodust records, formalized in a publicly accessible database, and discuss the emerging properties of the global dust cycle during the Holocene by integrating our analysis with simulations performed with the Community Earth System Model. We show how the size distribution of dust is intrinsically related to the dust mass accumulation rates and that only considering a consistent size range allows for a consistent analysis of the global dust cycle.

Using results from the PlioMIP ensemble to investigate the Greenland Ice Sheet during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period

Climate and ice sheet models are often used to predict the nature of ice sheets in Earth history. It is important to understand if such predictions are consistent between different models, especially in warm periods of relevance to the future. We use input from 15 different climate models to run one ice sheet model and compare the predictions over Greenland. We find that there are large differences between the predicted ice sheets for the warm Pliocene (c. 3 million years ago).

Publications Highlight articles

Highlight articles

Information for

External links