An overview of late Holocene climate and environme

Authors: Darrell S Kaufman

Publish Date: 2008/10/14

Volume: 41, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-6

PDF Link

Abstract

The 14 papers in this Special Issue of the Journal of Paleolimnology report new records of Holocene climate and environmental change from Arctic lakes with emphasis on the last 2000 years The study sites span the high latitudes of North America and extend into northwestern Europe The studies rely on multiple proxy indicators to reconstruct past climate including varve thicknesses chironomid diatom and pollen assemblages biogenicsilica and organicmatter content oxygenisotope ratios in diatoms and the frequency of lakeicerafted aggregates These proxies primarily document changes in past summer temperatures the main control on physical and biological processes in lakes at high latitudes The records will be integrated into a larger network of paleoclimate sites to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of climate change and to compare the paleoclimate inferences with the output of general circulation modelsThis is the Introduction to a series of fourteen papers published as a special issue dedicated to reconstructing late Holocene climate change from Arctic lake sediments The special issue is a contribution to the International Polar Year and was edited by Darrell KaufmanThe 14 papers in this volume benefited from the generous input of 41 peer reviewers Their dedication to the review process and their insights into limnological records of climate change improved the presentation and guided the interpretation of results I am grateful to the authors all of whom worked so diligently I thank Mark Brenner for handling the editorial duties for the papers that I coauthored and for input on this Introduction and Thomas Whitmore and Yarrow Axford for their suggestions Bruce Bauer and David Anderson at the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology provided support for the data archive Research and project coordination for this volume were funded primarily by the Arctic System Science Program ARCSS of the US National Science Foundation with assistance from the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States ARCUS

Keywords: