Character of climate instability during warm periods: Investigations from Central Italy

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In light of the unprecedented nature of anthropogenically-induced warming, quantitativepalaeoclimate reconstructions of past interglacials offer a valuable insight into naturalbackground conditions during periods of excess warmth. A prominent example is the LastInterglacial (129-116 thousand years ago), characterised by global mean temperature 1deg Cabove pre-industrial values, intense Arctic warming and global sea-level ~6-9 m abovepresent.Despite being previously considered as relatively stable, recent research has revealed aseries of high-frequency climate oscillations of greater intensity than during the Holocene (last11.7 thousand years) punctuating the Last Interglacial in the North Atlantic and southernEurope (Tzedakis et al., 2018). This has raised a series of questions regarding thegeographical extent and intensity of abrupt events, as well as whether intervals warmer thanpresent are inherently more climatically unstable.A lack of precise, independent and robust chronological control has been the primaryconstraint limiting the identification of high-frequency climate variability within earlierinterglacials. Applying a chronology using dated volcanic ash (tephra) layers, this project aimsto employ pollen analysis to reconstruct terrestrial vegetation and assess the extent of climateinstability during the Last Interglacial at Fucino Basin, Central Italy, compared to the Holocene.