Seasonal temperatures in Britain during the past 22,000 years, reconstructed using beetle remains

Atkinson, T. C.; Briffa, Keith R.; Coope, G. Russell

doi:10.1038/325587a0

Cited by 723 publications

(421 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The southward movement of the polar front would allow a southward extension of winter sea ice during the last glacial. The presence of winter sea ice at lower latitudes could explain the greater cooling of winter temperatures compared to summer temperatures seen both in the west Mediterranean Sea LGM SST records of this study and also in the LGM seasonal air temperature evidence in Europe (Atkinson et al, 1987;Isarin et al, 1998;Peyron et al, 1998).…”

Section: Past Seasonality In Sst At Gibraltarmentioning

confidence: 90%

Increased seasonality in the Western Mediterranean during the last glacial from limpet shell geochemistry

Ferguson

Henderson

et al. 2011

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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Editor: P. DeMenocalKeywords: mollusc seasonality Gibraltar palaeoclimate oxygen isotopesThe seasonal cycle is a fundamental aspect of climate, with a significant influence on mean climate and on human societies. Assessing seasonality in different climate states is therefore important but, outside the tropics, very few palaeoclimate records with seasonal resolution exist and there are currently no glacial-age seasonal-resolution sea-surface-temperature (SST) records at mid to high latitudes. Here we show that both Mg/Ca and oxygen isotope (δ 18 O) ratios in modern limpet (Patella) shells record the seasonal range of SST in the western Mediterranean -a region particularly susceptible to seasonal change. Analysis of a suite of fossil limpet shells from Gibraltar shows that SST seasonality was greater during the last glacial by~2°C as a result of greater winter cooling. These extra-tropical seasonal-resolution SST records for the last glacial suggest that the presence of large ice-sheets in the northern hemisphere enhances winter cooling. This result also indicates that seasonality in the Mediterranean is not well-represented in most palaeoclimate models, which typically show little change in seasonal amplitude, and provides a new test for the accuracy of climate models.

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Section: Past Seasonality In Sst At Gibraltarmentioning

confidence: 90%

Increased seasonality in the Western Mediterranean during the last glacial from limpet shell geochemistry

Ferguson

Henderson

et al. 2011

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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“…The difference of the used scenario to the two underlying ones (9 1°C) is not sufficient. Temperature reconstructions based on beetle remains (Atkinson et al, 1987) yielded such low temperatures in the late Wü rm. However, it is not clear, whether these findings can be transferred to Central Europe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untangling a Holocene pollen record with forest model simulations and independent climate data

Lischke¹,

Lotter

Fischlin³

2002

Ecological Modelling

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Adaptation potential of forests to rapid climatic changes can be assessed from vegetation dynamics during past climatic changes as preserved in fossil pollen data. However, pollen data reflect the integrated effects of climate and biotic processes, such as establishment, survival, competition, and migration. To disentangle these processes, we compared an annually laminated late Wü rm and Holocene pollen record from the Central Swiss Plateau with simulations of a dynamic forest patch model. All input data used in the simulations were largely independent from pollen data; i.e. the presented analysis is non-circular. Temperature and precipitation scenarios were based on reconstructions from pollen-independent sources. The earliest arrival times of the species at the study site after the last glacial were inferred from pollen maps. We ran a series of simulations under different combinations of climate and immigration scenarios. In addition, the sensitivity of the simulated presence/absence of four major species to changes in the climate scenario was examined. The pattern of the pollen record could partly be explained by the used climate scenario, mostly by temperature. However, some features, in particular the absence of most species during the late Wü rm could only be simulated if the winter temperature anomalies of the used scenario were decreased considerably. Consequently, we had to assume in the simulations, that most species immigrated during or after the Younger Dryas (12 000 years BP), Abies and Fagus even later. Given the timing of tree species immigration, the vegetation was in equilibrium with climate during long periods, but responded with lags at the time-scale of centuries to millennia caused by a secondary succession after rapid climatic changes such as at the end of Younger Dryas, or immigration of dominant taxa. Climate influenced the tree taxa both directly and indirectly by changing inter-specific competition. We concluded, that also during the present fast climatic change, species migration might be an important process, particularly if geographic barriers, such as the Alps are in the migrational path.

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“…4). Widespread ice-sheet retreat prior to the onset of rapid warming is also supported by the cold-climate fauna of the estuarine Errol Clays in Eastern Scotland (Peacock, 1981(Peacock, , 2003McCabe et al, 2007), the cold-climate fauna of pre-Windermere Interstade coleopteran assemblages at deglaciated sites in England (Atkinson et al, 1987) and ice-wedge casts indicative of pre-Windermere permafrost development in sediments deposited by the retreating ice sheet (Ballantyne and Harris, 1994). The above evidence for substantial ice-sheet shrinkage prior to the onset of the Windermere Interstade has been generally interpreted as indicating glacial thinning due to reduced snowfall.…”

Section: Implications For Deglaciation Chronologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure dating and reinterpretation of coarse debris accumulations (‘rock glaciers’) in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

Ballantyne

Schnabel

2008

J Quaternary Science

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Relict rock glaciers have considerable potential for contributing to palaeoclimatic reconstruction, but this potential is often undermined by lack of dating control and problems of interpretation. Here we reinvestigate and date four proposed 'rock glaciers' in the Cairngorm Mountains and show that the morphology of only one of these appears consistent with that of a true rock glacier produced by creep of underlying ice or ice-rich sediment. All four features comprise rockslide or rock avalanche runout debris, and the possibility that all four represent unmodified runout accumulations cannot be discounted. Surface exposure dating of the four debris accumulations using cosmogenic 10 Be produced uncertainty-weighted mean ages of 15.4 AE 0.8 ka, 16.2 AE 1.0 ka, 12.1 AE 0.6 ka and 12.7 AE 0.8 ka. All four ages imply emplacement under cold stadial conditions, two prior to the Windermere Interstade of ca. 14.5-12.9 cal. ka BP and two during the Loch Lomond Stade of ca. 12.9-11.5 cal. ka BP. The above ages indicate that paraglacial rock-slope failure on granite rockwalls occurred within a few millennia after deglaciation. The mean exposure ages obtained for runout debris at two sites -Strath Nethy (16.2 AE 1.0 ka) and Lairig Ghru (15.4 AE 0.8 ka) -are consistent with basal radiocarbon ages from Loch Etteridge, 22 km to the southwest (mean ¼ 15.6 AE 0.3 cal. ka BP) and imply widespread deglaciation of the Cairngorms and adjacent valleys before 15 ka and possibly 16 ka.

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Seasonal temperatures in Britain during the past 22,000 years, reconstructed using beetle remains

Cited by 723 publications

References 28 publications

Increased seasonality in the Western Mediterranean during the last glacial from limpet shell geochemistry

Increased seasonality in the Western Mediterranean during the last glacial from limpet shell geochemistry

Untangling a Holocene pollen record with forest model simulations and independent climate data

Exposure dating and reinterpretation of coarse debris accumulations (‘rock glaciers’) in the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland

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