CP Climate of the Past CP Clim. Past 1814-9332 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/cp-9-1645-2013 Caspian sea-level changes during the last millennium: historical and geological evidence from the south Caspian Sea Naderi Beni A. 1 Lahijani H. 2 Mousavi Harami R. 1 Arpe K. 3 4 Leroy S. A. G. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2556-2339 4 Marriner N. 5 Berberian M. 6 Andrieu-Ponel V. 7 Djamali M. 7 Mahboubi A. 1 Reimer P. J. 8 Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran Marine Geology Department, Iranian National Institute for Oceanography (INIO), Tehran, Iran Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany Institute for the Environment, Brunel University, UB8 3PH Uxbridge, London, UK Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, CEREGE, UMR6635 – IRD, CEREGE, UMR161 – Collège de France, CEREGE, 13545 Aix en Provence cedex 4, France School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ 08754-2001, USA Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie UMR7263 CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université – Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois – Pavillon Villemin – BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 04, France School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK 29 07 2013 9 4 1645 1665 Copyright: © 2013 A. Naderi Beni et al. 2013 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/ This article is available from https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/9/1645/2013/cp-9-1645-2013.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/9/1645/2013/cp-9-1645-2013.pdf

Historical literature may constitute a valuable source of information to reconstruct sea-level changes. Here, historical documents and geological records have been combined to reconstruct Caspian sea-level (CSL) changes during the last millennium. In addition to a comprehensive literature review, new data from two short sediment cores were obtained from the south-eastern Caspian coast to identify coastal change driven by water-level changes and to compare the results with other geological and historical findings. The overall results indicate a high-stand during the Little Ice Age, up to −21 m (and extra rises due to manmade river avulsion), with a −28 m low-stand during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, while presently the CSL stands at −26.5 m. A comparison of the CSL curve with other lake systems and proxy records suggests that the main sea-level oscillations are essentially paced by solar irradiance. Although the major controller of the long-term CSL changes is driven by climatological factors, the seismicity of the basin creates local changes in base level. These local base-level changes should be considered in any CSL reconstruction.

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