| AUTHORS | Eleonora Regattieri (1), Giovanni Zanchetta (2), Russell Neil Drysdale (3), Biagio Giaccio (1), Nomade Sebastien (4), Bernd Wagner (5), Alexander Francke (5), John Hellstrom (6), Ilaria Isola (7), Chiara Boschi (8) |
| ABSTRACT | The Last Interglacial, roughly matching the Marine Isotope Stage 5e, is the closest interglacial to the present one and one of the best documented in different polar, marine and terrestrial archives (Govin et al., 2015 and references therein). Already marine and terrestrial proxies in the North Atlantic have revealed substantial climate variability during the period of MIS 5e full interglacial. However, there are few chronologically well-anchored continental records documenting the MIS 5 climatic history over the Mediterranean (e.g. Drysdale et al., 2005; Regattieri et al., 2014), an area which has been shown to be particularly sensitive to global changes (Giorgi and Lionello, 2008). Here we present four multiproxy records (stable isotope and elemental composition) from continental carbonates (speleothems and lacustrine sediment) from mountain sites along the Apennine chain (Corchia and Tana che Urla caves and Sulmona and Fucino basins, central Italy), each having an independent, radiometric chronology. The comparisons among the records give a total-replicated and coherent framework of climate and environmental variability for the period 130-90 ka, and highlight the presence of pervasive, millennial-scale changes in the hydrological regime within the MIS 5e full interglacial. Drysdale R.N., Zanchetta G., Hellstrom J.C., Fallick A.E., Zhao J.X. 2005. Stalagmite evidence for the onset of the Last Interglacial in southern Europe at 129+/−1 ka. Geophysical Research Letters 32: 1-4. Giorgi F., & Lionello, P. (2008). Climate change projections for the Mediterranean region. Global and Planetary Change, 63(2), 90-104. Govin A., Capron E., Tzedakis P. C., Verheyden S., Ghaleb B., Hillaire-Marcel C., St-Onge G., Stoner, J.S., Bassinot F., Bazin L., Blunier T., N. Combourieu-Nebout N., El Ouahabi A., Genty D., Gersonde R., Jimenez-Amat P., A. Landais A., Martrat B., Masson-Delmotte V., Parrenin F., Seidenkrantz M.S., Veres D., Waelbroeck C., Zahn R. 2015. Sequence of events from the onset to the demise of the Last Interglacial: Evaluating strengths and limitations of chronologies used in climatic archives. Quaternary Science Reviews, 129, 1-36. Regattieri E., Zanchetta G., Drysdale R.N., Isola I., Hellstrom J.C., Roncioni A. 2014b. A continuous stable isotope record from the penultimate glacial maximum to the Last Interglacial (159–121ka) from Tana Che Urla Cave (Apuan Alps, central Italy). Quaternary Research 82(2), 450-461. |