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Late Quaternary Climate History of Northern Europe

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From the Earth's Core to Outer Space

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences ((LNESS,volume 137))

Abstract

Understanding the full range of natural climate variability is a fundamental basis for palaeoclimate reconstruction and for estimating the magnitude of the anthropogenic influence on global change. Earth’s climate varies on many different time scales, and the magnitude and timing of temperature fluctuations has varied substantially between regions. Earth’s orbital changes are responsible for the past glacial-interglacial cycles, but the global climate has also constantly fluctuated throughout the present interglacial (the Holocene). This review presents current understanding of the recent glacial-interglacial cycles in the Eurasian region. In addition, general characteristics of the Holocene climate fluctuations in Northern Europe are introduced, focusing on two different aspects. The first is longer-term (millennial) cooling and warming trends and the magnitude of the variability at regional scales, whereas the second is a review of the evidence for shorter-term climate oscillations, such as the 8.2 ka cooling event in Northern Europe during the Holocene. Special attention is paid to historically documented decadal or centennial climate episodes, namely the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age, which have been reported from numerous palaeoproxy records globally, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.

Due to the diversity of time scales discussed in the present review, the following abbreviations have been used: (1) “ka ago” means thousands of years ago, and is used for the glacial period, (2) “yrs BP” means calibrated calendar years before AD 1950 and is used for the post-glacial period, and (3) “AD/BC” are designations according to the Julian and Gregorian calendars and are used for the period of historically documented climate excursions (i.e. the last ca. 2,000 years).

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  1. Geological Survey of Finland, Betonimiehenkuja 4, FI-02150, Espoo, Finland

    Antti E. K. Ojala

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    Ilmari Haapala

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Ojala, A.E.K. (2012). Late Quaternary Climate History of Northern Europe. In: Haapala, I. (eds) From the Earth's Core to Outer Space. Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, vol 137. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25550-2_14

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