Western Mediterranean Climate Response to Dansgaard/Oeschger Events: New Insights From Speleothem Records

Wassenburg, Jasper A.
Mertz-Kraus, Regina

Spötl, Christoph

Jochum, Klaus Peter

Gibert, Luis
Scholz, Denis

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084009
Persistent URL: http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/9147
Abstract
The 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.
Subjects
Spainlast glacial
Dansgaard/Oeschger
speleothem
Marine Isotope Stage 3
western Mediterranean climate