Paleoclimate Variability in the Mediterranean Region

Abstract

Paleo-climatic and -oceanographic studies are essentially motivated by elementary societal and scientific needs for understanding our planet, in particular the amplitude of natural variability with the purpose of discriminating between natural and human-made change and predicting the effect of anthropogenic impacts on the future global climatic system.By collecting and compiling quantitative paleoclimatic information of the principal parameters from the Mediterranean region, both on land and in the ocean, in various climate periods: (i) warm climate intervals of the Pleistocene including the Holocene (our current interglacial period) and (ii) times of abrupt climate shift, in particular from cold to warming periods, such as deglaciation(s) and the glacial millennial-scale variations, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of the forcing mechanisms behind the temporal and spatial patterns observed, provide information useful for model improvement and validation and hopefully help to predict how future climate may affect the Mediterranean area.

Paleoclimate and paleoceanography over the past 20,000 yr in the Mediterranean Sea Basins as indicated by sediment elemental proxies

“…The use of these proxies has recently increased due to technical advances, such as X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) core scanners. Numerous paleoclimate studies have provided important information on regional and global scale patterns of climate variability in the Mediterranean region (e.g., Abrantes et al, 2012;Lionello, 2012;Malanotte-Rizzoli et al, 2014) (Fig. 1, Table Supplementary material).…”

Orbital- and millennial-scale environmental changes between 64 and 20 ka BP recorded in Black Sea sediments

“…Anatolia is a part of the Mediterranean region sensu lato (Lauer, 1993;Walter and Breckle, 1999;Weischet and Endlicher, 2000;Abrantes et al, 2012), and characterized by high plant diversity with ∼ 8500 species (Kürschner et al, 1997), which results from the geographical complexity of this mountainous region and glacial-interglacial dynamics during the Pleistocene (Zohary, 1973). The southern and eastern Black Sea coastal mountainous regions, for instance, were most likely long-term glacial refugia for thermophilic trees (Leroy and Arpe, 2007).…”

Evolución de la vegetación en el sector biogeográfico Castellano Cantábrico durante el Cuaternario Final, a través del registro tobáceo

“…Esto estuvo acompañado por la expansión hacia latitudes más meridionales de taxones arctoterciarios (Wolfe, 1985). Con la instauración del clima Mediterráneo en el Plioceno Superior (Abrantes, et al, 2012), la mayoría de estos elementos paleotropicales termófilos se extinguieron en la Península Ibérica (Jiménez-Moreno, et al, 2010).…”

“…En este contexto de paulatino enfriamiento y aridificación del clima tras el interglacial Eemiense (Abrantes, et al, 2012), cabe esperar que los taxones mesotérmicos citados en el Pleistoceno Medio en los yacimientos de Tubilla del Agua y Frías -cf. Tilia sp., Acer campestre, Corylus avellana y Buxus sempervirens-, así como aquellos que requieren suelos frescos -Betula sp.…”