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High-Resolution Climate Study of the Past to Determine the Natural Evolution of the Present Interglacial Period and to Evaluate the Anthropogenic Contribution to It

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High-Resolution Climate Study of the Past to Determine the Natural Evolution of the Present Interglacial Period and to Evaluate the Anthropogenic Contribution to It Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Increasing the knowledge on the drivers of climate change during the eresa Rodrigues Holocene and its consequences is fundamental to understand the processes T that determine the global climate system. Accordingly, this research is focused High-resolution Climate Study of the Past to determine the natural evolution of the present interglacial period and to evaluate the anthropogenic contribution to it. To get insight into these objectives (570,000 to 300,000 years) and Present the present study compares the Holocene records with those of previous interglacial periods. Obviously, these warm intervals represent potential past analogues of the Interglacial in the Iberian Margin: current interglacial not influenced by human activities. The comparison focuses in particular on the timing and duration of the interglacials and subsequent glacials, a biomarkers view on the: i) nature of the climate response in the marine and terrestrial environments and ii) the presence of stability or instability conditions. Teresa Rodrigues Ph.D. Thesis and Present Interglacial in the Iberian Margin: a biomarkers view High-resolution Climate Study of the Past (570,000 to 300,000 years) 2009 High-resolution Climate Study of the Past (570,000 to 300,000 years) and Present Interglacial in the Iberian Margin: a biomarkers view Teresa Rodrigues Ph. D. thesis 2009 ______________________________________________________ High-Resolution Climate Study of the Past (570,000 to 300,000 years) and Present Interglacial in the Iberian Margin: a biomarkers view Teresa Rodrigues Ph. D. thesis ________________________________________________________________________ FCFCTT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia Ministério da Ciência e do Ensino Superior Department of Environmental Chemistry Unidade de Geologia Marinha Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research IDÆA Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia, I.P. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Estrada da Portela, Bairro do Zambujal – Alfragide Jordi Girona, 18 08034-Barcelona Apartado 7586 - 2720-866 Amadora Doctoral studies in Marine Sciences & Environmental Technology Thesis supervisors: Professor Joan O. Grimalt Professor Fatima Abrantes Para ti, Xavier INDEX ABSTRACT I RESUMO II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V PERFACE VI Chapter 1 ________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION 28 1.1Climate Oscillations over the Late Quaternary 33 1.1.1 Orbital Climate Variability 33 1.1.2 Suborbital climate variability 37 1.2. Main Objectives and Motivation 42 2. MATERIAL 47 2.1 Environmental setting 51 3. BIOMARKERS: TYPE AND USE 56 3.1 Alkenones 57 3.2. Alkanes and alcohols 64 3.2.1. Alkanes 65 3.2.2. Alcohols 67 4. METHODOLOGY 69 4.1. Samples extraction and purification 69 4.1.1. Gas Chromatography – Flame Ionization Detector (FID) 70 4.1.2. Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) 72 4.2. Other methodologies usedv 73 4.2.1. Grain size analyses 73 4.2.3. Elemental analyses 74 5. REFERENCES 75 Chapter________________________________________________________________________ 2 Shallow marine sediment cores record climate variability and earthquake activity off Lisbon (Portugal) for the last 2,000 years. ABSTRACT 88 1. INTRODUCTION 89 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS 90 3. CHRONOLOGY 93 3.1. Reservoir Effect Correction 93 3.2. Age Model 94 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 100 4.1 Earthquake Activity 99 4.2. Climate 103 4.2.1. Temperature 104 4.2.2. River input / Continental Climate 106 4.2.3 Sea Water Salinity 111 4.2.4 The North Atlantic Oscillation and the Tagus regime 113 4.3 Coastal Productivity 114 5. CONCLUSIONS 117 6. REFERENCES 118 Chapter 3 ________________________________________________________________________ Holocene Interdependences of changes in sea surface temperature, productivity and fluvial inputs in the Iberian continental shelf (Tagus Mud patch) ABSTRACT 126 1. INTRODUCTION 127 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS 129 3. CHRONOLOGY 132 4. RESULTS 135 4.1. Sea Surface Temperature 135 4.2. Paleoproductivity 137 4.3. River contribution 139 5. DISCUSSION 141 5.1. Climate variability and river evolution during the Holocene 141 5.2. Short-term variability 143 6. CONCLUSIONS 146 7. REFERENCES 147 Chapter 4 ________________________________________________________________________ The last glacial-interglacial transition (LGIT) in the western mid-latitudes of the North Atlantic: abrupt sea surface temperature change and sea level implications ABSTRACT 154 1. INTRODUCTION 155 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS 156 3. CHRONOLOGY 158 4. RESULTS 161 4.1 Sea surface Temperature 161 4.2 Other proxies analised in core D13882 161 5. DISCUSSION 162 5.1 Climate variability in the western Iberian margin 162 5.2 Is there evidence of the meltwater pulses in the Iberian Margin? 167 6. CONCLUSIONS 169 7. REFERENCES 171 Chapter 5 ________________________________________________________________________ Millennial-scale climate variability off Portugal during Marine Isotope Stages 15-9 (570 to 300 ka): Evidence from marine and terrestrial biomarker records ABSTRACT 176 1. INTRODUCTION 177 2- MODERN HYDROLOGIC CONDITIONS 180 3- MATERIAL AND METHODS 181 4- CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY 182 5- RESULTS 183 5.1- Sea Surface Temperature variability 183 5.2- Advection of subpolar water masses and ice rafted detritus 188 5.3 - Variations in concentrations of terrigenous and marine biomarkers and organic carbon 189 6- DISCUSSION 191 6.1- Rapid Climate Changes and Surface Water Mass variability 191 6.2- Climate cyclicity 193 6.3 - Abrupt variability 195 6.4 - Eolian inputs and productivity 199 6.5 - Holocene versus MIS 11.3 201 7- CONCLUSION 201 8. REFERENCES 203 Chapter 6 ________________________________________________________________________ 1. CONCLUSIONS 209 2. GENERAL REMARKS AND PRESPECTIVES 216 APPENDICES________________________________________________________________________ Main Publications of relevance to the Thesis APPENDIX 1 Climate change and coastal hydrographic response along the Atlantic Iberian margin (Tagus Prodelta and Muros Ría) during the last two millennia. APPENDIX 2 Variability of the North Atlantic Current during the last 2000 years based on shelf bottom water and sea surface temperatures along an open ocean/ shallow marine transect in western Europe. APPENDIX 3 Proxy Calibration to instrumental dataset: Implications for Paleoceanographic reconstructions APPENDIX 4 Variations in mid-latitude North Atlantic surface water properties during the mid-Brunhes: Does Marine Isotope Stage 11 stand out? ABSTRACT Increasing the knowledge on the drivers of climate change during the Holocene and its consequences is fundamental to understand the processes that determine the global climate system. Accordingly, this research is focused to determine the natural evolution of the present interglacial period and to evaluate the anthropogenic contribution to it. To get insight into these objectives the present study compares the Holocene records with those of previous interglacial periods. Obviously, these warm intervals represent potential past analogues of the current interglacial not influenced by human activities. The comparison focuses in particular on the timing and duration of the interglacials and subsequent glacials, on the: i) nature of the climate response in the marine and terrestrial environments and ii) the presence of stability or instability conditions. High-resolution paleoclimate oscillations off the western Iberian margin during the Marine Isotopic Stages (MIS) 1 (covering the last 13,5 ka) and MIS 15 to 9 (between 580 and 300 ka) have been reconstructed. These are based on multiproxy analyses of several sediment archives retrieved from the Tagus mud patch and from the Estremadura spur. The multi-proxy analysis includes alkenone-based sea surface temperature reconstructions k’ (U 37-SST), terrigenous biomarkers: n-alkanes and n-alcohols (which reflect the evolution of the terrestrial vascular plants), concentrations of total alkenones and percentages of total organic carbon (which provide information on the marine productivity) and percent abundance of tetra-unsaturated alkenone (which records freshwater inputs). According to the results, the last two centuries were marked by large variations of SST possibly reflecting the increasing occurrence of extreme conditions. The last 2 ka shows SST variability of 2ºC on a century scale that allows the identification of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, 550–1300 AD), the Little Ice Age (LIA, 1300–1900 AD) and the discontinuity associated to the well known 1755 AD Lisbon earthquake. The biomarker data observed in this study shows drier continental conditions and increased coastal upwelling during the MWP which was associated with the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). During the LIA that is related to the negative NAO phase, the same proxies indicate increased river influx and river induced marine productivity. The beginning of the Holocene was marked by an abrupt increase in SST until optimum climate conditions at the beginning of this period. After this episode there is a general trend of SST decrease and superimposed to it rapid cooling events have been identified. These climate patterns have also been previously recorded in other sites such as the NE Atlantic and Mediterranean areas. The glacial-interglacial transition in the Tagus area is marked by a sharp SST increase contemporaneous with a strong sea level rise synchronously with the well-known mwp-1B and consequent retreat of the coastline in the Tagus mud
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