On the basis of glacier and lake-level records, this paper attempts, for the first time, a comparison between high-resolution palaeohydrological and palaeoglaciological data in west-central Europe over the past 3500 years. A data set of tree-ring width, radiocarbon and archaeological data, in addition to historical sources, were used to reconstruct fluctuations of the Great Aletsch, the Gorner and the Lower Grindelwald glaciers in the Swiss Alps. The three ice-streams experienced nearly synchronous advances at c. 1000-600 BC and AD 500-600, 800-900, 1100-1200 and 1300-1860. These glacier fluctuations show strong correspondence with lake-level variations reconstructed in eastern France (Jura mountains and Pre-Alps) and on the Swiss Plateau. This supports the hypothesis of climatically driven fluctuations. Historical data available for the period since AD 1550 reveal, in detail, various meteorological conditions behind the successive glacier advances. However, in agreement with the general trend shown by the historical data, the synchroneity between glacier advances and periods of higher lake level suggests the impact of general winter cooling and an increase in summer moisture as responsible for reinforced feeding of both glaciers and lakes in west-central Europe over the past 3500 years. Finally, a comparison between the Great Aletsch glacier and the residual 14C records supports the hypothesis that variations in solar activity were a major forcing factor of climatic oscillations in west-central Europe during the late Holocene.
This paper presents a lake-level record established for the last millennium at Lake Saint-Point in the French Jura Mountains. A comparison of this lake-level record with a solar irradiance record supports the hypothesis of a solar forcing of variations in the hydrological cycle linked to climatic oscillations over the last millennium in west-central Europe, with higher lake levels during the solar minimums of Oort (around AD 1060), Wolf (around AD 1320), Spörer (around AD 1450), Maunder (around AD 1690), and Dalton (around AD 1820). Further comparisons of the Saint-Point record with the fluctuations of the Great Aletsch Glacier (Swiss Alps) and a record of Rhône River floods from Lake Bourget (French Alps) give evidence of possible imprints of proxy sensitivity on reconstructed paleohydrological records. In particular, the Great Aletsch record shows an increasing glacier mass from AD 1350 to 1850, suggesting a cumulative effect of the Little Ice Age cooling and/or a possible reflection of a millennial-scale general cooling until the mid-19th century in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, the Saint-Point and Bourget records show a general trend toward a decrease in lake levels and in flood magnitude anti-correlated with generally increasing solar irradiance.
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