Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (4)
Document Type
- Article (4)
Language
- English (4)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (4)
Keywords
- Speleothems (2)
- Annual laminae (1)
- Bunker cave (1)
- C-14 bomb peak (1)
- Cross-dating (1)
- Dansgaard-Oeschger event (1)
- Europe (1)
- Lamina thickness (1)
- Marine isotope stage 3 (1)
- Multi-proxy approach (1)
- North Atlantic forcing (1)
- Palaeoclimatology (1)
- Pleistocene (1)
- Romania (1)
- Tree-ring software (1)
- U-Th series (1)
- precipitation reconstruction (1)
- proxy calibration (1)
- speleothem (1)
- trace elements (1)
We present the first high-resolution trace element (Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, Ba/Ca) record from a stalagmite in southwestern Romania covering the last 3.6 ka, which provides the potential for quantitative climate reconstruction. Precise age control is based on three independent dating methods, in particular for the last 250 yr, where chemical lamina counting is combined with the identification of the 20th century radiocarbon bomb peak and Th-230/U dating. Long-term cave monitoring and model simulations of drip water and speleothem elemental variability indicate that precipitation-related processes are the main drivers of speleothem Mg/Ca ratios. Calibration against instrumental climate data shows a significant anti-correlation of speleothem Mg/Ca ratios with autumn/winter (October to March) precipitation (r = -0.61, p < 0.01), which is statistically robust when considering age uncertainties and auto-correlation. This relationship is used to develop a quantitative reconstruction of autumn/winter precipitation. During the late Holocene, our data suggest a heterogeneous pattern of past regional winter hydroclimate in the Carpathian/Balkan realm, along with intermittent weakening of the dominant influence of North Atlantic forcing. In agreement with other regional paleo-hydrological reconstructions, the observed variability reveals periodically occurring strong NW-SE hydro-climate gradients. We hypothesize, that this pattern is caused by shifts of the eastern edge of the area of influence of the NAO across central eastern Europe due to the confluence of North Atlantic forcing, and other climatic features such as the East Atlantic/Western Russia (EAWR) pattern. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3, 57-27 ka) was characterised by numerous rapid climate oscillations (i.e., Dansgaard-Oeschger (D/O-) events), which are reflected in various climate archives. So far, MIS 3 speleothem records from central Europe have mainly been restricted to caves located beneath temperate Alpine glaciers or close to the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, MIS 3 seemed to be too cold and dry to enable speleothem growth north of the Alps in central Europe. Here we present a new speleothem record from Bunker Cave, Germany, which shows two distinct growth phases from 52.0 (+0.8, -0.5) to 50.9 (+0.6, -1.3) ka and 473 (+1.0, -0.6) to 42.8 (+/- 0.9) ka, rejecting this hypothesis. These two growth phases potentially correspond to the two warmest and most humid phases in central Europe during MIS 3, which is confirmed by pollen data from the nearby Eifel. The hiatus separating the two phases is associated with Heinrich stadial 5 (HS 5), although the growth stop precedes the onset of HS 5. The first growth phase is characterised by a fast growth rate, and Mg concentrations and Sr isotope data suggest high infiltration and the presence of soil cover above the cave. The second growth phase was characterised by drier, but still favourable conditions for speleothem growth. During this phase, the delta C-13 values show a significant decrease associated with D/O-event 12. The timing of this shift is in agreement with other MIS 3 speleothem data from Europe and Greenland ice core data. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Three small stalagmites from Zoolithencave (southern Germany) show visible laminae, which consist of a clear and a brownish, pigmented layer pair. This potentially provides the opportunity to construct precise chronologies by counting annual laminae. The growth period of the three stalagmites was constrained by the C-14 bomb peak in the youngest part of all three stalagmites and C-14-dating of a piece of charcoal in the consolidated base part of stalagmite Zoo-rez-2. These data suggest an age of AD 1970 for the top laminae and a lower age limit of AD 1973-1682 or AD 1735-1778. Laminae were counted and their thickness determined on scanned thin sections of all stalagmites. On stalagmites Zoo-rez-1 and -2, three tracks were measured near the growth axes, each separated into three sections at prominent anchor laminae (I, II, III). Each section was replicated three times (a, b, c). For Zoo-rez-3, only one track was measured. The total number of laminae counted for Zoo-rez-1 ranges from 138 to 177, for Zoo-rez-2 from 119 to 145, and for Zoo-rez-3 from 159 to 166. The numbers agree well with the range constrained by the bomb peak and the age of the charcoal, which supports the annual origin of the laminae. The replicated measurements of the different tracks as well as the three different tracks on the stalagmites Zoo-rez-1 and-2 were cross-dated using the TSAP-Win (R) tree-ring software. This software is very useful for cross-dating because it enables to insert or delete missing or false laminae as well as identifying common pattern by shifting the series back and forth in time. However, visual inspection of the thin sections was necessary to confirm detection of missing or false laminae by TSAP-Win (R). For all three Zoo-rez speleothems, crossdating of the mean lamina thickness series was not possible due to a missing common pattern. The cross-dating procedure results in three refined chronologies for the three Zoo-rez stalagmites of ranging from AD 1821-1970 (Zoo-rez-1), AD 1835-1970 (Zoo-rez-2), and AD 1808-1970 (Zoo-rez-3).
Although quantitative isotope data from speleothems has been used to evaluate isotope-enabled model simulations, currently no consensus exists regarding the most appropriate methodology through which to achieve this. A number of modelling groups will be running isotope-enabled palaeoclimate simulations in the framework of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6, so it is timely to evaluate different approaches to using the speleothem data for data–model comparisons. Here, we illustrate this using 456 globally distributed speleothem δ18O records from an updated version of the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis (SISAL) database and palaeoclimate simulations generated using the ECHAM5-wiso isotope-enabled atmospheric circulation model. We show that the SISAL records reproduce the first-order spatial patterns of isotopic variability in the modern day, strongly supporting the application of this dataset for evaluating model-derived isotope variability into the past. However, the discontinuous nature of many speleothem records complicates the process of procuring large numbers of records if data–model comparisons are made using the traditional approach of comparing anomalies between a control period and a given palaeoclimate experiment. To circumvent this issue, we illustrate techniques through which the absolute isotope values during any time period could be used for model evaluation. Specifically, we show that speleothem isotope records allow an assessment of a model's ability to simulate spatial isotopic trends. Our analyses provide a protocol for using speleothem isotope data for model evaluation, including screening the observations to take into account the impact of speleothem mineralogy on δ18O values, the optimum period for the modern observational baseline and the selection of an appropriate time window for creating means of the isotope data for palaeo-time-slices.