TY  - JOUR
A1  - Obreht, Igor
A1  - Wörmer, Lars
A1  - Brauer, Achim
A1  - Wendt, Jenny
A1  - Alfken, Susanne
A1  - De Vleeschouwer, David
A1  - Elvert, Marcus
A1  - Hinrichs, Kai-Uwe
T1  - An annually resolved record of Western European vegetation response to Younger Dryas cooling
JF  - Quaternary science reviews : the international multidisciplinary research and review journal
N2  - The regional patterns and timing of the Younger Dryas cooling in the North Atlantic realm were complex and are mechanistically incompletely understood. To enhance understanding of regional climate patterns, we present molecular biomarker records at subannual to annual resolution by mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) of sediments from the Lake Meerfelder Maar covering the Allerod-Younger Dryas transition. These analyses are supported by conventional extraction-based molecular-isotopic analyses, which both validate the imaging results and constrain the sources of the target compounds. The targeted fatty acid biomarkers serve as a gauge of the response of the local aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem to climate change. Based on the comparison of our data with existing data from Meerfelder Maar, we analyse the short-term environmental evolution in Western Europe during the studied time interval and confirm the previously reported delayed hydrological response to Greenland cooling. However, despite a detected delay of Western European environmental change of similar to 135 years, our biomarker data show statistically significant correlation with deuterium excess in Greenland ice core at - annual resolution during this time-transgressive cooling. This suggests a coherent atmospheric forcing across the North Atlantic realm during this transition. We propose that Western European cooling was postponed due to major reorganization of the westerlies that were intermittently forcing warmer and wetter air masses from lower latitudes to Western Europe and thus resulted in delayed cooling relative to Greenland.
KW  - lateglacial
KW  - paleoclimatology
KW  - Western Europe
KW  - Meerfelder Maar
KW  - high-resolution biomarkers
KW  - fatty acids
KW  - FT-ICR-MS
KW  - mass spectrometry
KW  - imaging
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106198
SN  - 0277-3791
VL  - 231
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
ER  -