Records of past climate variability and associated vegetation response exist in various regions throughout Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). To date, there has been no coherent synthesis of the existing palaeo-records. During an INTIMATE meeting (Cluj Napoca, Romania) focused on identifying CEE paleo-records, it was decided to address this gap by presenting the palaeo-community with a compilation of high-quality climatic and vegetation records for the past 60-8 kyrs. The compilation should also serve as a reference point for the use in the modelling community working towards the INTIMATE project goals, and in data-model inter-comparison studies. This paper is therefore a compilation of up to date, best available quantitative and semi-quantitative records of past climate and biotic response from CEE covering this period. It first presents the proxy and archive used. Speleothems and loess mainly provide the evidences available for the 60-20 ka interval, whereas pollen records provide the main source of information for the Lateglacial and Holocene. It then examines the temporal and spatial patterns of climate variability inferred from different proxies, the temporal and spatial magnitude of the vegetation responses inferred from pollen records and highlights differences and similarities between proxies and sub-regions and the possible mechanisms behind this variability. Finally, it identifies weakness in the proxies and archives and their geographical distribution. This exercise also provides an opportunity to reflect on the status of research in the area and to identify future critical areas and subjects of research.

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Among abundant reconstructions of Holocene climate in Europe, only a handful has addressed winter conditions, and most of these are restricted in length and/or resolution. Here we present a record of late autumn through early winter air temperature and moisture source changes in East-Central Europe for the Holocene, based on stable isotopic analysis of an ice core recovered from a cave in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains. During the past 10,000 years, reconstructed temperature changes followed insolation, with a minimum in the early Holocene, followed by gradual and continuous increase towards the mid-to-late-Holocene peak (between 4-2 kcal BP), and finally by a decrease after 0.8 kcal BP towards a minimum during the Little Ice Age (AD 1300–1850). Reconstructed early Holocene atmospheric circulation patterns were similar to those characteristics of the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), while in the late Holocene they resembled those prevailing in the positive NAO phase. The transition between the two regimes occurred abruptly at around 4.7 kcal BP. Remarkably, the widespread cooling at 8.2 kcal BP is not seen very well as a temperature change, but as a shift in moisture source, suggesting weaker westerlies and increased Mediterranean cyclones penetrating northward at this time.

Radon loss from water during storage in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polylactic acid (PLA) bottles was evaluated. Surface/volume ratio and thickness of plastic materials were studied. A correction for dissolved radium concentration was applied to estimate gas loss. Proper corrections for degassing efficiency of aerators were developed. The interference of H2O on radon daughter electrostatic collection was quantified.

SignificanceA causality between millennial-scale climate cycles and the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans in Europe has tentatively been suggested. However, that replacement was diachronous and occurred over several such cycles. A poorly constrained continental paleoclimate framework has hindered identification of any inherent causality. Speleothems from the Carpathians reveal that, between 44,000 and 40,000 years ago, a sequence of stadials with severely cold and arid conditions caused successive regional Neanderthal depopulation intervals across Europe and facilitated staggered repopulation by modern humans. Repetitive depopulation–repopulation cycles may have facilitated multiple genetic turnover in Europe between 44,000 and 34,000 years ago.

[1] Recently, a series of studies have targeted the stable isotopic composition of cave ice as a possible source of paleoclimatic information, but none presented an explanation for the way in which the external climatic signal is transferred to cave ice. While the relation between the stable isotopic composition of precipitation and drip water can be relatively easily determined, a more complex problem arises, i.e., the possible alteration of the primary climatic signal recorded by the oxygen and hydrogen stable isotopes during the freezing of water to form cave ice. Here we report the results of the first detailed investigations of the oxygen and hydrogen stable isotope behavior during the formation of ice in Scărişoara Ice Cave. Samples of ice align on a straight line with a slope lower than 8 in a d 18 O-d 2 H plot, characteristic for ice formed by the freezing of water. A model is presented for the reconstruction of the initial isotopic composition of water, despite the complexity induced by kinetic effects during early stages of freezing. These results are consistent with ice that forms by the downward freezing of a stagnant pool of water, under kinetic conditions in the initial stages of the process, and isotopic equilibrium thereafter. As ice caves are described in many parts of the world, otherwise poorly represented in ice-based paleoclimatology, the results of this study could open a new direction in paleoclimatic research so that an array of significant paleoclimate data can be developed on the basis of their study.

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