Articles | Volume 19, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2093-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
01 Nov 2023
Research article |
| 01 Nov 2023
| 01 Nov 2023
Pollen-based reconstructions of Holocene climate trends in the eastern Mediterranean region
Esmeralda Cruz-Silva
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
School of Archaeology, Geography, and Environmental Science, Reading University, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, RG6 6AH, UK
Sandy P. Harrison
School of Archaeology, Geography, and Environmental Science, Reading University, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, RG6 6AH, UK
I. Colin Prentice
Georgina Mace Centre for the Living Planet, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK
Elena Marinova
Laboratory for Archaeobotany, Baden-Württemberg State Office for Cultural Heritage Management, Fischersteig 9, 78343 Hemmenhofen-Gaienhofen, Germany
Patrick J. Bartlein
Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1251, USA
Hans Renssen
Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health, University of South-Eastern Norway, Bø, Norway
Yurui Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
Related authors
No articles found.
Mengmeng Liu, Iain Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Clim. Past, 22, 205–226, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-205-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-22-205-2026, 2026
Short summary
Short summary
Dansgaard-Oeschger events were large and rapid climate transitions that occurred multiple times during the last glacial period. We reconstructed the global pattern during these events using fossil pollen records, and found a north-south antiphasing of temperature change, and reduced seasonality in the northern extratropics.
Daniel J. Lunt, Nicky M. Wright, Bram Vaes, Ulrich Salzmann, James W. B. Rae, Thomas Hickler, David K. Hutchinson, Julia Brugger, Jiang Zhu, Sebastian Steinig, A. Nele Meckler, Gordon N. Inglis, David Evans, Agatha M. de Boer, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Natalie Burls, Yurui Zhang, Appy Sluijs, Tammo Reichgelt, Igor Niezgodzki, Katrin Meissner, Jean-Baptiste Ladant, Fanni D. Kelemen, Matthew Huber, David Greenwood, Mattias Green, Flavia Boscolo-Galazzo, Mauel Tobias Blau, and Michiel Baatsen
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6135, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6135, 2026
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).
Short summary
Short summary
The early Eocene, about 50 million years ago, was a super-warm period of Earth's history, with high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Here, we provide a framework and experimental design for climate modellers to carry out a coordinated project, simulating this period. This is the second phase of this project, and here we provide updated maps of the Earth's mountains and ocean floor, and vegetation, to enable more accurate modelling.
Amin Hassan, Iain Colin Prentice, and Xu Liang
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 30, 317–341, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-317-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-317-2026, 2026
Short summary
Short summary
Evapotranspiration is evaporation that occurs from plants, soil, and water bodies, but determining these components is difficult. We developed a new method that uses measurements such as streamflow and rainfall to determine the portion of plant evaporation. We found differences among vegetation types and climate conditions, and showed that plant water use peaks in moderately dry regions. The results improve understanding of plant-water interactions and can help improve water and climate models.
Jiahe Zheng, Zhengsen Xu, Rossella Arcucci, Sandy P. Harrison, Lincoln Linlin Xu, and Sibo Cheng
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4007, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4007, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS).
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce the first AI model that predicts wildfire spread with the placement of both permanent and temporary firebreaks. Our spatiotemporal model learns from simulation data to capture how fire interacts with changing suppression efforts over time. Our model runs fast enough for near real-time use and performs well across different wildfire events. This approach could lead to better tools for helping decision-makers understand where and when firebreaks are most effective.
Jierong Zhao, Boya Zhou, Sandy P. Harrison, and Colin Prentice
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 1655–1669, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1655-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1655-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We used eco-evolutionary optimality modelling to examine how climate and CO2 impacted vegetation at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; 21 000 years ago) and the mid-Holocene (MH; 6000 years ago). Low CO2 at the LGM was as important as climate in reducing tree cover and productivity and in increasing C4 plant abundance. Climate had positive effects on MH vegetation, but the low CO2 was a constraint on plant growth. These results show it is important to consider changing CO2 to model ecosystem changes.
Luke Sweeney, Sandy P. Harrison, and Marc Vander Linden
Biogeosciences, 22, 4903–4922, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4903-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4903-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Changes in tree cover across Europe during the Holocene are reconstructed from fossil pollen data using a model developed with modern observations of tree cover and modern pollen assemblages. There is a rapid increase in tree cover after the last glacial period, with maximum cover during the mid-Holocene and a decline thereafter; the timing of the maximum and the speed of the increase and subsequent decrease vary regionally, likely reflecting differences in climate trajectories and human influence.
Yurui Zhang, Jilin Wei, Zhen Li, Nan Dai, Weipeng Zheng, Qiuzhen Yin, Agatha de Boer, Zhengguo Shi, and Lixia Zhang
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4485, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4485, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This study examines how the warm Miocene (~23–5 Ma) climate responded to orbital changes compared with modern day. Simulations show weaker Miocene temperature responses with distinct spatial patterns. High latitudes were less sensitive due to weaker albedo feedback, while tropical Africa cooled more strongly from an enhanced water cycle. The Southern Ocean warmed under low insolation as winter sea ice shrank. These findings highlight how background climate states shape orbital climate responses.
Joseph Ovwemuvwose, Ian Colin Prentice, and Heather Graven
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3785, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3785, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This work examines the role of cropland representation and the treatment of photosynthetic pathways in the uncertainties in the carbon flux simulations in Earth System Models (ESMs). Our results show that reducing these uncertainties will require improvement of the representation of C3 and C4 crops and natural vegetation area coverage as well as the theories underpinning the simulation of their carbon uptake and storage processes.
Peter U. Clark, Jeremy D. Shakun, Yair Rosenthal, Chenyu Zhu, Patrick J. Bartlein, Jonathan M. Gregory, Peter Köhler, Zhengyu Liu, and Daniel P. Schrag
Clim. Past, 21, 973–1000, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-973-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-973-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We reconstruct changes in mean ocean temperature (ΔMOT) over the last 4.5 Myr. We find that the ratio of ΔMOT to changes in global mean sea surface temperature was around 0.5 before the Middle Pleistocene transition but was 1 thereafter. We subtract our ΔMOT reconstruction from the global δ18O record to derive the δ18O of seawater. Finally, we develop a theoretical understanding of why the ratio of ΔMOT / ΔGMSST changed over the Plio-Pleistocene.
Yurui Zhang, Hans Renssen, Heikki Seppä, Zhen Li, and Xingrui Li
Clim. Past, 21, 67–77, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-67-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-67-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
The upper and lower atmospheres interact. The polar regions, with high-speed, cyclonically rotating winds, provide a window through which upper winds affect surface weather and climate variability. By analysing climate model results, we found that ice sheets induced anomalous upward wave propagation and stretched the rotating winds towards North America, increasing the likelihood of cold-air outbreaks at the mid-latitudes. This accounts for the enhanced winter cooling at these latitudes.
Kieran M. R. Hunt and Sandy P. Harrison
Clim. Past, 21, 1–26, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
In this study, we train machine learning models on tree rings, speleothems, and instrumental rainfall to estimate seasonal monsoon rainfall over India over the last 500 years. Our models highlight multidecadal droughts in the mid-17th and 19th centuries, and we link these to historical famines. Using techniques from explainable AI (artificial intelligence), we show that our models use known relationships between local hydroclimate and the monsoon circulation.
Fang Li, Xiang Song, Sandy P. Harrison, Jennifer R. Marlon, Zhongda Lin, L. Ruby Leung, Jörg Schwinger, Virginie Marécal, Shiyu Wang, Daniel S. Ward, Xiao Dong, Hanna Lee, Lars Nieradzik, Sam S. Rabin, and Roland Séférian
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8751–8771, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8751-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8751-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This study provides the first comprehensive assessment of historical fire simulations from 19 Earth system models in phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Most models reproduce global totals, spatial patterns, seasonality, and regional historical changes well but fail to simulate the recent decline in global burned area and underestimate the fire response to climate variability. CMIP6 simulations address three critical issues of phase-5 models.
David Sandoval, Iain Colin Prentice, and Rodolfo L. B. Nóbrega
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4229–4309, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4229-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4229-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Numerous estimates of water and energy balances depend on empirical equations requiring site-specific calibration, posing risks of "the right answers for the wrong reasons". We introduce novel first-principles formulations to calculate key quantities without requiring local calibration, matching predictions from complex land surface models.
Nikita Kaushal, Franziska A. Lechleitner, Micah Wilhelm, Khalil Azennoud, Janica C. Bühler, Kerstin Braun, Yassine Ait Brahim, Andy Baker, Yuval Burstyn, Laia Comas-Bru, Jens Fohlmeister, Yonaton Goldsmith, Sandy P. Harrison, István G. Hatvani, Kira Rehfeld, Magdalena Ritzau, Vanessa Skiba, Heather M. Stoll, József G. Szűcs, Péter Tanos, Pauline C. Treble, Vitor Azevedo, Jonathan L. Baker, Andrea Borsato, Sakonvan Chawchai, Andrea Columbu, Laura Endres, Jun Hu, Zoltán Kern, Alena Kimbrough, Koray Koç, Monika Markowska, Belen Martrat, Syed Masood Ahmad, Carole Nehme, Valdir Felipe Novello, Carlos Pérez-Mejías, Jiaoyang Ruan, Natasha Sekhon, Nitesh Sinha, Carol V. Tadros, Benjamin H. Tiger, Sophie Warken, Annabel Wolf, Haiwei Zhang, and SISAL Working Group members
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1933–1963, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1933-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1933-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Speleothems are a popular, multi-proxy climate archive that provide regional to global insights into past hydroclimate trends with precise chronologies. We present an update to the SISAL (Speleothem Isotopes
Synthesis and AnaLysis) database, SISALv3, which, for the first time, contains speleothem trace element records, in addition to an update to the stable isotope records available in previous versions of the database, cumulatively providing data from 365 globally distributed sites.
Synthesis and AnaLysis) database, SISALv3, which, for the first time, contains speleothem trace element records, in addition to an update to the stable isotope records available in previous versions of the database, cumulatively providing data from 365 globally distributed sites.
Katie R. Blackford, Matthew Kasoar, Chantelle Burton, Eleanor Burke, Iain Colin Prentice, and Apostolos Voulgarakis
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 3063–3079, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3063-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3063-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Peatlands are globally important stores of carbon which are being increasingly threatened by wildfires with knock-on effects on the climate system. Here we introduce a novel peat fire parameterization in the northern high latitudes to the INFERNO global fire model. Representing peat fires increases annual burnt area across the high latitudes, alongside improvements in how we capture year-to-year variation in burning and emissions.
Huiying Xu, Han Wang, Iain Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Biogeosciences, 20, 4511–4525, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4511-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4511-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Leaf carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) are crucial elements in leaf construction and physiological processes. This study reconciled the roles of phylogeny, species identity, and climate in stoichiometric traits at individual and community levels. The variations in community-level leaf N and C : N ratio were captured by optimality-based models using climate data. Our results provide an approach to improve the representation of leaf stoichiometry in vegetation models to better couple N with C cycling.
Olivia Haas, Iain Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Biogeosciences, 20, 3981–3995, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-3981-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-3981-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We quantify the impact of CO2 and climate on global patterns of burnt area, fire size, and intensity under Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) conditions using three climate scenarios. Climate change alone did not produce the observed LGM reduction in burnt area, but low CO2 did through reducing vegetation productivity. Fire intensity was sensitive to CO2 but strongly affected by changes in atmospheric dryness. Low CO2 caused smaller fires; climate had the opposite effect except in the driest scenario.
Giulia Mengoli, Sandy P. Harrison, and I. Colin Prentice
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1261, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1261, 2023
Preprint archived
Short summary
Short summary
Soil water availability affects plant carbon uptake by reducing leaf area and/or by closing stomata, which reduces its efficiency. We present a new formulation of how climatic dryness reduces both maximum carbon uptake and the soil-moisture threshold below which it declines further. This formulation illustrates how plants adapt their water conservation strategy to thrive in dry climates, and is step towards a better representation of soil-moisture effects in climate models.
Mengmeng Liu, Yicheng Shen, Penelope González-Sampériz, Graciela Gil-Romera, Cajo J. F. ter Braak, Iain Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Clim. Past, 19, 803–834, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-803-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-803-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We reconstructed the Holocene climates in the Iberian Peninsula using a large pollen data set and found that the west–east moisture gradient was much flatter than today. We also found that the winter was much colder, which can be expected from the low winter insolation during the Holocene. However, summer temperature did not follow the trend of summer insolation, instead, it was strongly correlated with moisture.
Paolo Scussolini, Job Dullaart, Sanne Muis, Alessio Rovere, Pepijn Bakker, Dim Coumou, Hans Renssen, Philip J. Ward, and Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts
Clim. Past, 19, 141–157, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-141-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-141-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We reconstruct sea level extremes due to storm surges in a past warmer climate. We employ a novel combination of paleoclimate modeling and global ocean hydrodynamic modeling. We find that during the Last Interglacial, about 127 000 years ago, seasonal sea level extremes were indeed significantly different – higher or lower – on long stretches of the global coast. These changes are associated with different patterns of atmospheric storminess linked with meridional shifts in wind bands.
Frank Arthur, Didier M. Roche, Ralph Fyfe, Aurélien Quiquet, and Hans Renssen
Clim. Past, 19, 87–106, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-87-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-87-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
This paper simulates transcient Holocene climate in Europe by applying an interactive downscaling to the standard version of the iLOVECLIM model. The results show that downscaling presents a higher spatial variability in better agreement with proxy-based reconstructions as compared to the standard model, particularly in the Alps, the Scandes, and the Mediterranean. Our downscaling scheme is numerically cheap, which can perform kilometric multi-millennial simulations suitable for future studies.
Huan Li, Hans Renssen, and Didier M. Roche
Clim. Past, 18, 2303–2319, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2303-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2303-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
In past warm periods, the Sahara region was covered by vegetation. In this paper we study transitions from this
greenstate to the desert state we find today. For this purpose, we have used a global climate model coupled to a vegetation model to perform transient simulations. We analyzed the model results to assess the effect of vegetation shifts on the abruptness of the transition. We find that the vegetation feedback was more efficient during the last interglacial than during the Holocene.
Jing M. Chen, Rong Wang, Yihong Liu, Liming He, Holly Croft, Xiangzhong Luo, Han Wang, Nicholas G. Smith, Trevor F. Keenan, I. Colin Prentice, Yongguang Zhang, Weimin Ju, and Ning Dong
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 4077–4093, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4077-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4077-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Green leaves contain chlorophyll pigments that harvest light for photosynthesis and also emit chlorophyll fluorescence as a byproduct. Both chlorophyll pigments and fluorescence can be measured by Earth-orbiting satellite sensors. Here we demonstrate that leaf photosynthetic capacity can be reliably derived globally using these measurements. This new satellite-based information overcomes a bottleneck in global ecological research where such spatially explicit information is currently lacking.
Yicheng Shen, Luke Sweeney, Mengmeng Liu, Jose Antonio Lopez Saez, Sebastián Pérez-Díaz, Reyes Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger, Graciela Gil-Romera, Dana Hoefer, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Heike Schneider, I. Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Clim. Past, 18, 1189–1201, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1189-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1189-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We present a method to reconstruct burnt area using a relationship between pollen and charcoal abundances and the calibration of charcoal abundance using modern observations of burnt area. We use this method to reconstruct changes in burnt area over the past 12 000 years from sites in Iberia. We show that regional changes in burnt area reflect known changes in climate, with a high burnt area during warming intervals and low burnt area when the climate was cooler and/or wetter than today.
Sandy P. Harrison, Roberto Villegas-Diaz, Esmeralda Cruz-Silva, Daniel Gallagher, David Kesner, Paul Lincoln, Yicheng Shen, Luke Sweeney, Daniele Colombaroli, Adam Ali, Chéïma Barhoumi, Yves Bergeron, Tatiana Blyakharchuk, Přemysl Bobek, Richard Bradshaw, Jennifer L. Clear, Sambor Czerwiński, Anne-Laure Daniau, John Dodson, Kevin J. Edwards, Mary E. Edwards, Angelica Feurdean, David Foster, Konrad Gajewski, Mariusz Gałka, Michelle Garneau, Thomas Giesecke, Graciela Gil Romera, Martin P. Girardin, Dana Hoefer, Kangyou Huang, Jun Inoue, Eva Jamrichová, Nauris Jasiunas, Wenying Jiang, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek, Piotr Kołaczek, Niina Kuosmanen, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Martin Lavoie, Fang Li, Jianyong Li, Olga Lisitsyna, José Antonio López-Sáez, Reyes Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger, Gabriel Magnan, Eniko Katalin Magyari, Alekss Maksims, Katarzyna Marcisz, Elena Marinova, Jenn Marlon, Scott Mensing, Joanna Miroslaw-Grabowska, Wyatt Oswald, Sebastián Pérez-Díaz, Ramón Pérez-Obiol, Sanna Piilo, Anneli Poska, Xiaoguang Qin, Cécile C. Remy, Pierre J. H. Richard, Sakari Salonen, Naoko Sasaki, Hieke Schneider, William Shotyk, Migle Stancikaite, Dace Šteinberga, Normunds Stivrins, Hikaru Takahara, Zhihai Tan, Liva Trasune, Charles E. Umbanhowar, Minna Väliranta, Jüri Vassiljev, Xiayun Xiao, Qinghai Xu, Xin Xu, Edyta Zawisza, Yan Zhao, Zheng Zhou, and Jordan Paillard
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1109–1124, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1109-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1109-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We provide a new global data set of charcoal preserved in sediments that can be used to examine how fire regimes have changed during past millennia and to investigate what caused these changes. The individual records have been standardised, and new age models have been constructed to allow better comparison across sites. The data set contains 1681 records from 1477 sites worldwide.
Alexander Kuhn-Régnier, Apostolos Voulgarakis, Peer Nowack, Matthias Forkel, I. Colin Prentice, and Sandy P. Harrison
Biogeosciences, 18, 3861–3879, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3861-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3861-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Along with current climate, vegetation, and human influences, long-term accumulation of biomass affects fires. Here, we find that including the influence of antecedent vegetation and moisture improves our ability to predict global burnt area. Additionally, the length of the preceding period which needs to be considered for accurate predictions varies across regions.
Sascha Scherer, Benjamin Höpfer, Katleen Deckers, Elske Fischer, Markus Fuchs, Ellen Kandeler, Jutta Lechterbeck, Eva Lehndorff, Johanna Lomax, Sven Marhan, Elena Marinova, Julia Meister, Christian Poll, Humay Rahimova, Manfred Rösch, Kristen Wroth, Julia Zastrow, Thomas Knopf, Thomas Scholten, and Peter Kühn
SOIL, 7, 269–304, https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-269-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-269-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
This paper aims to reconstruct Middle Bronze Age (MBA) land use practices in the northwestern Alpine foreland (SW Germany, Hegau). We used a multi-proxy approach including biogeochemical proxies from colluvial deposits in the surroundings of a MBA settlement, on-site archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data and off-site pollen data. From our data we infer land use practices such as plowing, cereal growth, forest farming and use of fire that marked the beginning of major colluvial deposition.
Sarah E. Parker, Sandy P. Harrison, Laia Comas-Bru, Nikita Kaushal, Allegra N. LeGrande, and Martin Werner
Clim. Past, 17, 1119–1138, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1119-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1119-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Regional trends in the oxygen isotope (δ18O) composition of stalagmites reflect several climate processes. We compare stalagmite δ18O records from monsoon regions and model simulations to identify the causes of δ18O variability over the last 12 000 years, and between glacial and interglacial states. Precipitation changes explain the glacial–interglacial δ18O changes in all monsoon regions; Holocene trends are due to a combination of precipitation, atmospheric circulation and temperature changes.
Masa Kageyama, Sandy P. Harrison, Marie-L. Kapsch, Marcus Lofverstrom, Juan M. Lora, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Sam Sherriff-Tadano, Tristan Vadsaria, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Nathaelle Bouttes, Deepak Chandan, Lauren J. Gregoire, Ruza F. Ivanovic, Kenji Izumi, Allegra N. LeGrande, Fanny Lhardy, Gerrit Lohmann, Polina A. Morozova, Rumi Ohgaito, André Paul, W. Richard Peltier, Christopher J. Poulsen, Aurélien Quiquet, Didier M. Roche, Xiaoxu Shi, Jessica E. Tierney, Paul J. Valdes, Evgeny Volodin, and Jiang Zhu
Clim. Past, 17, 1065–1089, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1065-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1065-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~21 000 years ago) is a major focus for evaluating how well climate models simulate climate changes as large as those expected in the future. Here, we compare the latest climate model (CMIP6-PMIP4) to the previous one (CMIP5-PMIP3) and to reconstructions. Large-scale climate features (e.g. land–sea contrast, polar amplification) are well captured by all models, while regional changes (e.g. winter extratropical cooling, precipitations) are still poorly represented.
Peter Aartsma, Johan Asplund, Arvid Odland, Stefanie Reinhardt, and Hans Renssen
Biogeosciences, 18, 1577–1599, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1577-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-1577-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
In the literature, it is generally assumed that alpine lichen heaths keep their direct environment cool due to their relatively high albedo. However, we reveal that the soil temperature and soil heat flux are higher below lichens than below shrubs during the growing season, despite a lower net radiation for lichens. We also show that the differences in microclimatic conditions between these two vegetation types are more pronounced during warm and sunny days than during cold and cloudy days.
Cited articles
Aksu, A. E. and Hiscott, R. N.: Persistent Holocene outflow from the Black Sea to the eastern Mediterranean Sea still contradicts the Noah's Flood Hypothesis: A review of 1997–2021 evidence and a regional paleoceanographic synthesis for the latest Pleistocene–Holocene, Earth Sci. Rev., 227, 103960, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.103960, 2022.
Asouti, E. and Fuller, D. Q.: From foraging to farming in the southern Levant: The development of Epipalaeolithic and Pre-pottery Neolithic plant management strategies, Veg. Hist. Archaeobot., 21, 149–162, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0332-0, 2012.
Bar-Matthews, M., Ayalon, A., and Kaufman, A.: Late Quaternary paleoclimate in the eastern Mediterranean region from stable isotope analysis of speleothems at Soreq Cave, Israel, Quaternary Res., 47, 155–168, https://doi.org/10.1006/qres.1997.1883, 1997.
Bartlein, P. J., Harrison, S. P., Brewer, S., Connor, S., Davis, B. A. S., Gajewski, K., Guiot, J., Harrison-Prentice, T. I., Henderson, A., Peyron, O., Prentice, I. C., Scholze, M., Seppä, H., Shuman, B., Sugita, S., Thompson, R. S., Viau, A., Williams, J., and Wu, H.: Pollen-based continental climate reconstructions at 6 and 21 ka: a global synthesis, Clim. Dynam., 37, 775–802, 2011.
Bartlein, P. J., Harrison, S. P., and Izumi, K.: Underlying causes of Eurasian mid-continental aridity in simulations of mid-Holocene climate, Geophys, Res. Lett., 44, 9020–9028, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL074476, 2017.
Bar-Yosef, O.: Multiple Origins of Agriculture in Eurasia and Africa, in: On Human Nature, edited by: Tibayrenc, M. Ayala, F. J., Academic Press, 297–331, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-420190-3.00019-3, 2017.
Belfer-Cohen, A. and Goring-Morris, A. N. Becoming Farmers: The Inside Story, Curr. Anthropol., 52, S209–S220, https://doi.org/10.1086/658861, 2011.
Bereiter, B., Eggleston, S., Schmitt, J., Nehrbass-Ahles, C., Stocker, T. F., Fischer, H., Kipfstuhl, S., and Chappellaz, J.: Revision of the EPICA Dome C CO2 record from 800 to 600 kyr before present, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 542–549, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL061957, 2015.
Blaauw, M., Christen, J. A., Aquino Lopez, M. A., Vazquez, J. E., Gonzalez V. O. M., Belding, T., Theiler, J., Gough, B., and Karney, C.: rbacon: Age-Depth Modelling using Bayesian Statistics (2.5.6) [R], https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rbacon (last access: 17 April 2023), 2021.
Blaschek, M. and Renssen, H.: The Holocene thermal maximum in the Nordic Seas: the impact of Greenland Ice Sheet melt and other forcings in a coupled atmosphere–sea-ice–ocean model, Clim. Past, 9, 1629–1643, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1629-2013, 2013.
Bottema, S.: The Younger Dryas in the eastern Mediterranean, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 14, 883–891, https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-3791(95)00069-0, 1995.
Burstyn, Y., Martrat, B., Lopez, J. F., Iriarte, E., Jacobson, M. J., Lone, M. A., and Deininger, M.: Speleothems from the Middle East: An example of water limited environments in the SISAL database, Quaternary, 2, 16, https://doi.org/10.3390/quat2020016, 2019.
Carré, M., Braconnot, P., Elliot, M., d'Agostino, R., Schurer, A., Shi, X., Marti, O., Lohmann, G., Jungclaus, J., Cheddadi, R., Abdelkader di Carlo, I., Cardich, J., Ochoa, D., Salas Gismondi, R., Pérez, A., Romero, P. E., Turcq, B., Corrège, T., and Harrison, S. P.: High-resolution marine data and transient simulations support orbital forcing of ENSO amplitude since the mid-Holocene, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 268, 107125, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107125, 2021.
Cheddadi, R. and Khater, C.: Climate change since the last glacial period in Lebanon and the persistence of Mediterranean species, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 150, 146–157, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.08.010, 2016.
Cheng, H., Sinha, A., Verheyden, S., Nader, F. H., Li, X. L., Zhang, P. Z., Yin, J. J., Yi, L., Peng, Y. B., Rao, Z. G., Ning, Y. F., and Edwards, R. L.: The climate variability in northern Levant over the past 20,000 years, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 8641–8650, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL065397, 2015.
Cheng, H., Zhang, H., Spötl, C., Baker, J., Sinha, A., Li, H., Bartolomé, M., Moreno, A., Kathayat, G., Zhao, J., Dong, X., Li, Y., Ning, Y., Jia, X., Zong, B., Ait Brahim, Y., Pérez-Mejías, C., Cai, Y., Novello, V. F., Cruz, F. W., Severinghaus, J. P., An, Z., and Edwards, R. L.: Timing and structure of the Younger Dryas event and its underlying climate dynamics, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 117, 23408–23417, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007869117, 2020.
Chevalier, M., Davis, B. A. S., Heiri, O., Seppä, H., Chase, B. M., Gajewski, K., Lacourse, T., Telford, R. J., Finsinger, W., Guiot, J., Kühl, N., Maezumi, S. Y., Tipton, J. R., Carter, V. A., Brussel, T., Phelps, L. N., Dawson, A., Zanon, M., Vallé, F., Nolan, C., Mauri, A., de Vernal, A., Izumi, K., Holmström, L., Marsicek, J., Goring, S., Sommer, P. S., Chaput, M., and Kupriyanov, D.: Pollen-based climate reconstruction techniques for late Quaternary studies, Earth Sci. Rev., 210, 103384, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103384, 2020.
Cleveland, W. S. and Devlin, S. J.: Locally weighted regression: An approach to regression analysis by local fitting, J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 83, 596–610, https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1988.10478639, 1988.
Cookson, E., Hill, D. J., and Lawrence, D.: Impacts of long term climate change during the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, J. Archael. Sci., 106, 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2019.03.009, 2019.
Collins, W. D., Bitz, C. M., Blackmon, M. L., Bonan, G. B., Bretherton, C. S., Carton, J. A., Chang, P., Doney, S. C., Hack, J. J., Henderson, T. B., Kiehl, J. T., Large, W. G., McKenna, D. S., Santer, B. D., and Smith, R. D.: The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3), J. Climate, 19, 2122–2143, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3761.1, 2006.
Contreras, D. A., Bondeau, A., Guiot, J., Kirman, A., Hiriart, E., Bernard, L., Suarez, R., and Fader, M.: From paleoclimate variables to prehistoric agriculture: Using a process-based agro-ecosystem model to simulate the impacts of Holocene climate change on potential agricultural productivity in Provence, France, Quatern. Int., 501, 303–316 2019.
Cruz-Silva, E.: EMBSeCBIO_Holocene_climate: First release (0.1.0), Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10040708, 2023.
Dallmeyer, A., Claussen, M., Lorenz, S. J., and Shanahan, T.: The end of the African humid period as seen by a transient comprehensive Earth system model simulation of the last 8000 years, Clim. Past, 16, 117–140, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-117-2020, 2020.
Davis, B. A. S., Brewer, S., Stevenson, A. C., and Guiot, J.: The temperature of Europe during the Holocene reconstructed from pollen data, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 22, 1701–1716, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(03)00173-2, 2003.
Dean, J. R., Jones, M. D., Leng, M. J., Noble, S. R., Metcalfe, S. E., Sloane, H. J., Sahy, D., Eastwood, W. J., and Roberts, C. N.: Eastern Mediterranean hydroclimate over the late glacial and Holocene, reconstructed from the sediments of Nar lake, central Turkey, using stable isotopes and carbonate mineralogy, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 124, 162–174, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.07.023, 2015.
Denèfle, M., Lézine, A., Fouache, E., and Dufaure, J.: A 12,000-Year pollen record from Lake Maliq, Albania, Quaternary Res., 54, 423–432, https://doi.org/10.1006/qres.2000.2179, 2000.
Drake, B. L.: The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages, J. Archaeol. Sci., 39, 1862–1870, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.01.029, 2012.
Flohr, P., Fleitmann, D., Matthews, R., Matthews, W., and Black, S.: Evidence of resilience to past climate change in Southwest Asia: Early farming communities and the 9.2 and 8.2 ka events, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 136, 23–39, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.06.022, 2016.
Goosse, H., Brovkin, V., Fichefet, T., Haarsma, R., Huybrechts, P., Jongma, J., Mouchet, A., Selten, F., Barriat, P.-Y., Campin, J.-M., Deleersnijder, E., Driesschaert, E., Goelzer, H., Janssens, I., Loutre, M.-F., Morales Maqueda, M. A., Opsteegh, T., Mathieu, P.-P., Munhoven, G., Pettersson, E. J., Renssen, H., Roche, D. M., Schaeffer, M., Tartinville, B., Timmermann, A., and Weber, S. L.: Description of the Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM version 1.2, Geosci. Model Dev., 3, 603–633, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-3-603-2010, 2010.
Harrison, S. P.: SPECIAL Modern Pollen Data Set for Climate Reconstructions, version 1 (SMPDS), University of Reading [data set], https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.194, 2019
Harrison, S. P., Prentice, I. C., Sutra, J.-P., Barboni, D., Kohfeld, K. E., and Ni, J.: Ecophysiological and bioclimatic foundations for a global plant functional classification, J. Veg. Sci., 21, 300–317, 2010.
Harrison, S. P., Gaillard, M.-J., Stocker, B. D., Vander Linden, M., Klein Goldewijk, K., Boles, O., Braconnot, P., Dawson, A., Fluet-Chouinard, E., Kaplan, J. O., Kastner, T., Pausata, F. S. R., Robinson, E., Whitehouse, N. J., Madella, M., and Morrison, K. D.: Development and testing scenarios for implementing land use and land cover changes during the Holocene in Earth system model experiments, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 805–824, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-805-2020, 2020.
Harrison, S. P., Marinova, E., and Cruz-Silva, E.: EMBSeCBIO pollen database, University of Reading [data set], https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.309, 2021.
Harrison, S. P., Cruz-Silva, E., Haas, O., Liu, M., Parker, S. E., Qiao, S., Shen, Y., and Sweeney, L.: Tools and approaches to addressing the climate-humans nexus during the Holocene, in: Proceedings of the 12th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, edited by: Marchetti, N., Campeggi, M., Cavaliere, F., D’Orazio, C., Giacosa, G., and Mariani, E., Harrassowitz Verlag, https://doi.org/10.13173/9783447118736, 2023.
He, F. and Clark, P. U.: Freshwater forcing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation revisited, Nat. Clim. Change, 12, 449–454, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01328-2, 2022.
Herzschuh, U., Böhmer, T., Li, C., Cao, X., Hébert, R., Dallmeyer, A., Telford, R. J., and Kruse, S.: Reversals in temperature-precipitation correlations in the Northern Hemisphere extratropics during the Holocene, Geophys. Res. Lett., 49, e2022GL099730, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL099730, 2022.
Hill, M. O.: Diversity and evenness: A unifying notation and its consequences, Ecol., 54, 427–432, https://doi.org/10.2307/1934352, 1973.
Joos, F., Gerber, S., Prentice, I. C., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., and Valdes, P. J.: Transient simulations of Holocene atmospheric carbon dioxide and terrestrial carbon since the last glacial maximum, Globzl Biogeochem. Cy., 18, GB2002, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003GB002156, 2004.
Kaniewski, D., Van Campo, E., Guiot, J., Le Burel, S., Otto, T., and Baeteman, C.: Environmental roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis, PLoS ONE, 8, e71004, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071004, 2013.
Kaplan, J. O., Krumhardt, K. M., Ellis, E. C., Ruddiman, W. F., Lemmen, C., and Klein Goldewijk, K.: Holocene carbon emissions as a result of anthropogenic land cover change, Holocene, 21, 775–791, 2011.
Kapsch, M.-L., Mikolajewicz, U., Ziemen, F., and Schannwell, C.: Ocean response in transient simulations of the last deglaciation dominated by underlying ice-sheet reconstruction and method of meltwater distribution, Geophys. Res. Lett., 49, e2021GL096767, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL096767, 2022.
Larsson, S. A., Kylander, M. E., Sannel, A. B. K., and Hammarlund, D.: Synchronous or not? The timing of the Younger Dryas and Greenland Stadial-1 reviewed using tephrochronology, Quaternary, 5, 19, https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5020019, 2022.
Liu, M., Prentice, I. C., ter Braak, C. J. F., and Harrison, S. P.: An improved statistical approach for reconstructing past climates from biotic assemblages, P. R. Soc. A, 476, 20200346, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2020.0346, 2020.
Liu, M., Shen, Y., González-Sampériz, P., Gil-Romera, G., ter Braak, C. J. F., Prentice, I. C., and Harrison, S. P.: Holocene climates of the Iberian Peninsula: pollen-based reconstructions of changes in the west–east gradient of temperature and moisture, Clim. Past, 19, 803–834, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-803-2023, 2023.
Liu, Z., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., He, F., Brady, E. C., Tomas, R., Clark, P. U., Carlson, A. E., Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Curry, W., Brook, E., Erickson, D., Jacob, R., Kutzbach, J., and Cheng, J.: Transient Simulation of Last Deglaciation with a New Mechanism for Bolling-Allerod Warming, Science, 325, 310–314, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1171041, 2009.
Magyari, E. K., Pál, I., Vincze, I., Veres, D., Jakab, G., Braun, M., Szalai, Z., Szabó, Z., and Korponai, J.: Warm Younger Dryas summers and early late glacial spread of temperate deciduous trees in the Pannonian Basin during the last glacial termination (20–9 kyr cal BP), Quaternary Sci. Rev., 225, 105980, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105980, 2019.
Mauri, A., Davis, B. A. S., Collins, P. M., and Kaplan, J. O.: The influence of atmospheric circulation on the mid-Holocene climate of Europe: a data–model comparison, Clim. Past, 10, 1925–1938, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-10-1925-2014, 2014.
Mauri, A., Davis, B. A. S., Collins, P. M., and Kaplan, J. O.: The climate of Europe during the Holocene: a gridded pollen-based reconstruction and its multi-proxy evaluation, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 112, 109–127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.01.013, 2015.
Mitchell, L., Brook, E., Lee, J., Buizert, C., and Sowers, T.: Constraints on the late Holocene anthropogenic contribution to the atmospheric methane budget, Science, 342, 964–966, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238920, 2013.
Nesbitt, M.: When and where did domesticated cereals first occur in southwest Asia?, in: The dawn of farming in the Near East, edited by: Cappers, R. T. J. and Bottema, S., Ex Oriente, 113–132, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234002845_When_and_where_did_domesticated_cereals_first_occur_in_southwest_Asia (last access: 27 October 2023), 2002.
New, M., Lister, D., Hulme, M., and Makin, I.: A high-resolution data set of surface climate over global land areas, Clim. Res., 21, 1–25, https://doi.org/10.3354/cr021001, 2002.
Palmisano, A., Bevan, A., Kabelindde, A., Roberts, N., and Shennan, S.: Long-term demographic trends in prehistoric Italy: Climate impacts and regionalised socio-ecological trajectories, J. World Prehist., 34, 381–432, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-021-09159-3, 2021.
Patton, H., Hubbard, A., Andreassen, K., Auriac, A., Whitehouse, P. L., Stroeven, A. P., Shackleton, C., Winsborrow, M., Heyman, J., and Hall, A. M.: Deglaciation of the Eurasian ice sheet complex, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 169, 148–172, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.05.019, 2017.
Prentice, I. C., Villegas-Diaz, R., and Harrison, S. P.: Accounting for atmospheric carbon dioxide variations in pollen-based reconstruction of past hydroclimates, Global Planet. Change, 211, 103790, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2022.103790, 2022a.
Prentice, I. C., Villegas-Diaz, R., and Harrison, S. P.: codos: 0.0.2 (0.0.2), Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5083309, 2022b.
Reimer, P., Austin, W. E. N., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Blackwell, P. G., Ramsey, C. B., Butzin, M., Cheng, H., Edwards, R. L., Friedrich, M., Grootes, P. M., Guilderson, T. P., Hajdas, I., Heaton, T. J., Hogg, A. G., Hughen, K. A., Kromer, B., Manning, S. W., Muscheler, R., Palmer, J. G., Pearson, C., Plicht, J. van der, Reimer, R., Richards, D. A., Scott, E. M., Southon, J. R., Turney, C. S. M., Wacker, L., Adolphi, F., Büntgen, U., Capano, M., Fahrni, S., Fogtmann-Schulz, A., Friedrich, R., Miyake, F., Olsen, J., Reinig, F., Sakamoto, M., Sookdeo, A., and Talamo, S.: The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere radiocarbon age calibration curve (0–55 cal kBP), Radiocarbon, 62, 725–757, https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2020.41, 2020.
Renssen, H., Seppä, H., Heiri, O., Roche, D. M., Goosse, H., and Fichefet, T.: The spatial and temporal complexity of the Holocene thermal maximum, Nat. Geosci., 2, 411–414, https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo513, 2009.
Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R., and Bettinger, R. L.: Was agriculture impossible during the Pleistocene but mandatory during the Holocene? A climate change hypothesis, Am. Antiqquity, 66, 387–411, https://doi.org/10.2307/2694241, 2001.
Roberts, N., Cassis, M., Doonan, O., Eastwood, W., Elton, H., Haldon, J., Izdebski, A., and Newhard, J.: Not the End of the World? Post-classical decline and recovery in rural Anatolia, Hum. Ecol., 46, 305–322, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-018-9973-2, 2018.
Roberts, C. N., Woodbridge, J., Palmisano, A., Bevan, A., Fyfe, R., and Shennan, S.: Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene: Synthesis, comparison and regional trends in population, land cover and climate, Holocene, 29, 923–937, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683619826697, 2019.
Roffet-Salque, M., Marciniak, A., Valdes, P. J., Pawłowska, K., Pyzel, J., Czerniak, L., Krüger, M., Roberts, C. N., Pitter, S., and Evershed, R. P.: Evidence for the impact of the 8.2-ky BP climate event on Near Eastern early farmers, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 115, 8705–8709, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803607115, 2018.
Ruddiman, W. F.: The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago, Clim. Change, 61, 261–293, https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004577.17928.fa, 2003.
Rymes, M. D. and Myers, D. R.: Mean preserving algorithm for smoothly interpolating averaged data, Sol. Energy, 71, 225–231, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0038-092X(01)00052-4, 2001.
Sadori, L., Jahns, S., and Peyron, O.: Mid-Holocene vegetation history of the central Mediterranean, Holocene, 21, 117–129, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683610377530, 2011.
Sidorenko, D., Goessling, H. f., Koldunov, N. v., Scholz, P., Danilov, S., Barbi, D., Cabos, W., Gurses, O., Harig, S., Hinrichs, C., Juricke, S., Lohmann, G., Losch, M., Mu, L., Rackow, T., Rakowsky, N., Sein, D., Semmler, T., Shi, X., Stepanek, C., Streffing, J., Wang, Q., Wekerle, C., Yang, H., and Jung, T.: Evaluation of FESOM2.0 coupled to ECHAM6.3: Preindustrial and HighResMIP simulations, J. Adv. Model. Earth Sy., 11, 3794–3815, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019MS001696, 2019.
Singarayer, J. S., Valdes, P. J., Friedlingstein, P., Nelson, S., and Beerling, D. J.: Late Holocene methane rise caused by orbitally controlled increase in tropical sources, Nature, 470, 82–85, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09739, 2011.
Smith, B. D.: Low-Level Food Production, J. Archaeol. Res., 9, 1–43, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009436110049, 2001.
Stocker, B. D., Yu, Z., Massa, C., and Joos, F.: Holocene peatland and ice-core data constraints on the timing and magnitude of CO2 emissions from past land use, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 114, 1492–1497, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1613889114, 2017.
Vadsaria, T., Zaragosi, S., Ramstein, G., Dutay, J.-C., Li, L., Siani, G., Revel, M., Obase, T., and Abe-Ouchi, A.: Freshwater influx to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea from the melting of the Fennoscandian ice sheet during the last deglaciation, Sci. Rep., 12, 8466, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12055-1, 2022.
Villegas-Diaz, R. and Harrison, S. P.: The SPECIAL Modern Pollen Data Set for Climate Reconstructions, version 2 (SMPDSv2), University of Reading [data set], https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.000389, 2022.
Villegas-Diaz, R., Cruz-Silva, E., and Harrison, S. P.: 90 ageR: Supervised Age Models, Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4636716, 2021.
Wei, D., González-Sampériz, P., Gil-Romera, G., Harrison, S. P., and Prentice, I. C.: Seasonal temperature and moisture changes in interior semi-arid Spain from the last interglacial to the Late Holocene, Quaternary Res., 101, 143–155, https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2020.108, 2021.
Weiberg, E., Bevan, A., Kouli, K., Katsianis, M., Woodbridge, J., Bonnier, A., Engel, M., Finné, M., Fyfe, R., Maniatis, Y., Palmisano, A., Panajiotidis, S., Roberts, C. N., and Shennan, S.: Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece: A comparative study, Holocene, 29, 742–760, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683619826641, 2019.
Weiss, H. and Bradley, R. S.: What Drives Societal Collapse? Science, 291, 609–610, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1058775, 2001.
Weninger, B., Alram-Stern, E., Bauer, E., Clare, L., Danzeglocke, U., Jöris, O., Kubatzki, C., Rollefson, G., Todorova, H., and van Andel, T.: Climate forcing due to the 8200 cal yr BP event observed at Early Neolithic sites in the eastern Mediterranean, Quaternary Res., 66, 401-420, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2006.06.009, 2006.
Willcox, G.: Searching for the origins of arable weeds in the Near East, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 21, 163–167, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-011-0307-1, 2012.
Yanchilina, A. G., Ryan, W. B. F., Kenna, T. C., and McManus, J. F.: Meltwater floods into the Black and Caspian Seas during Heinrich Stadial 1, Earth Sci. Rev., 198, 102931, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.102931, 2019.
Zeder, M. A.: The origins of agriculture in the Near East, Curr. Anthropol., 52, S221–S235, https://doi.org/10.1086/659307, 2011.
Zhang, Y., Renssen, H., and Seppä, H.: Effects of melting ice sheets and orbital forcing on the early Holocene warming in the extratropical Northern Hemisphere, Clim. Past, 12, 1119–1135, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1119-2016, 2016.
Zhang, Y., Renssen, H., Seppä, H., and Valdes, P. J.: Holocene temperature trends in the extratropical Northern Hemisphere based on inter-model comparisons, J. Quaternary Sci., 33, 464–476. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3027, 2018.
Short summary
We examined 71 pollen records (12.3 ka to present) in the eastern Mediterranean, reconstructing climate changes. Over 9000 years, winters gradually warmed due to orbital factors. Summer temperatures peaked at 4.5–5 ka, likely declining because of ice sheets. Moisture increased post-11 kyr, remaining high from 10–6 kyr before a slow decrease. Climate models face challenges in replicating moisture transport.
We examined 71 pollen records (12.3 ka to present) in the eastern Mediterranean, reconstructing...
