Alaska: Höhlensedimente dokumentieren letzteiszeitliche Klimadynamik

Paul Wilcox, Geologe an der Universität Innsbruck, entdeckte erstmalig landbasierte Belege für Schmelzwasserimpulse während der letzten Eiszeit vor etwa 20.000 Jahren. Das Alter der Höhlensedimente wurde mit Hilfe optischer Datierungsmethoden bestimmt. Die aus den Sedimenten gewonnenen Daten tragen entscheidend dazu bei, die Abfolge der Klimaereignisse, die damals zu einer Erwärmung des Planeten führten, zu rekonstruieren.

Session CL1.2.12

Recurrent humid phases in Arabia over the past 8 million years - Nature

A climatic record from desert speleothems shows that the central Arabian interior experienced recurrent humid intervals over the past 8 million years, which likely facilitated mammalian dispersals between Africa and Eurasia.

Become an AQUA member – Australasian Quaternary Association (AQUA)

Dating Speleothems and Speleothem Growth

On Sunday I was invited to give a Science Forum webinar to the Australasian Cave and Karst Management Association. The topic was ‘Dating Speleothems and Speleothem Growth’. The recordin…

SISALv3: A global speleothem stable isotope and trace element database

Abstract. Paleoclimate information on multiple climate variables at different spatiotemporal scales is increasingly important to understand environmental and societal responses to climate change. A lack of high-quality reconstructions of past hydroclimate has recently been identified as a critical research gap. Speleothems, with their precise chronologies, widespread distribution, and ability to record changes in local to regional hydroclimate variability, are an ideal source of such information. Here we present a new version of the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis database (SISALv3), which has been expanded to include trace element ratios and Sr-isotopes as additional, hydroclimate-sensitive geochemical proxies. The oxygen and carbon isotope data included in previous versions of the database have been substantially expanded. SISALv3, contains speleothem data from 364 sites from across the globe, including 94 Mg/Ca, 83 Sr/Ca, 51 Ba/Ca, 25 U/Ca, 29 P/Ca and 14 Sr-isotope records. The database also has increased spatiotemporal coverage for stable oxygen (831) and carbon (588) isotope records compared to SISALv2. Additional meta information has been added to improve machine-readability and filtering of data. Standardized chronologies are included for all new entities together with the originally published chronologies. The SISALv3 database thus constitutes a unique resource of speleothem paleoclimate information that allows regional-to-global paleoclimate analyses based on multiple geochemical proxies, allowing more robust interpretations of past hydroclimate and comparisons with isotope-enabled climate models and other earth system and hydrological models.