References

Climate of the Past

Clim. Past

1814-9332

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/cp-8-637-2012

A seesaw in Mediterranean precipitation during the Roman Period linked to millennial-scale changes in the North Atlantic

Dermody

B. J.

¹ de Boer

H. J.

¹ Bierkens

M. F. P.

² Weber

S. L.

³ Wassen

M. J.

¹ Dekker

S. C.

Department of Environmental Sciences, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands

29 03 2012

8 2 637 651

2012

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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We present a reconstruction of the change in climatic humidity around the Mediterranean between 3000–1000 yr BP. Using a range of proxy archives and model simulations we demonstrate that climate during this period was typified by a millennial-scale seesaw in climatic humidity between Spain and Israel on one side and the Central Mediterranean and Turkey on the other, similar to precipitation anomalies associated with the East Atlantic/West Russia pattern in current climate. We find that changes in the position and intensity of the jet stream indicated by our analysis correlate with millennial changes in North Atlantic sea surface temperature. A model simulation indicates the proxies of climatic humidity used in our analysis were unlikely to be influenced by climatic aridification caused by deforestation during the Roman Period. That finding is supported by an analysis of the distribution of archaeological sites in the Eastern Mediterranean which exhibits no evidence that human habitation distribution changed since ancient times as a result of climatic aridification. Therefore we conclude that changes in climatic humidity over the Mediterranean during the Roman Period were primarily caused by a modification of the jet stream linked to sea surface temperature change in the North Atlantic. Based on our findings, we propose that ocean-atmosphere coupling may have contributed to regulating Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation intensity during the period of analysis.

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