Reconstruction of Holocene hydroclimate variability in the southern central Mediterranean (Sicily) based on precisely dated speleothem multi-proxy records

气候变化情景表明，由于人为引起的全球变暖，地中海生态系统可能会变成沙漠，对社会产生相当大的影响。因此，迫切需要对地中海地区过去的水文变化进行古气候研究，以揭示潜在的气候机制。西西里岛是研究全新世水文变化及其与大气环流变化关系的关键地区。在此，我建议基于西西里岛（地中海中南部）的5个石笋个体，生成一个精确定年的高分辨率的全新世洞穴多代理（δ18O, δ13C，微量元素浓度，岩石学）记录，以重建过去的水文气候变化。该地区全新世水文气候变化的精确年代连续高分辨率（< 10年）记录尚未获得。石笋样本来自三个洞穴系统，我们的初步u系列年龄表明，所有石笋的综合生长阶段覆盖了整个全新世。生成的多代理洞穴记录将使我们能够重建西西里岛的区域水文气候变化，我们将把这些结果与地中海东部和西部以及意大利北部的其他洞穴记录进行比较。新的替代记录将通过与意大利现有的高分辨率替代记录进行比较，来调查过去大气环流的变化。此外，新的时间序列将被纳入欧洲洞穴网络。我们将对来自该网络的高分辨率洞穴洞穴记录进行一致性分析，以测试在全新世期间影响中欧和北欧洞穴洞穴代理时间序列的大规模大气环流变化是否也对地中海中南部产生影响。

Climate change scenarios suggest that Mediterranean ecosystems could change into deserts in response to anthropogenically induced global warming with a considerable impact on society. Therefore, there is an urgent need for palaeoclimate studies on past hydrological changes in the Mediterranean region to unveil the underlying climate mechanism. Sicily is located in a key area to study past hydrologic changes during the Holocene and their relationship to changes of the atmospheric circulation.Here I propose to generate a precisely dated high-resolution Holocene speleothem multi-proxy (δ18O, δ13C, trace element concentration, petrography) record based on five individual stalagmites from Sicily (southern central Mediterranean) to reconstruct past changes in hydroclimate. For this region, precisely dated continuous high-resolution (< 10 years) records of Holocene hydroclimate changes are not available yet. The stalagmites were sampled from three cave systems, and our preliminary U-series ages show that the combined growth phases of all stalagmites cover the entire Holocene. The generated multi-proxy speleothem record will enable us to reconstruct regional hydroclimate variability on Sicily, and we will compare these results with other speleothem proxy records from the eastern and western Mediterranean as well as from northern Italy. The new proxy records will allow to investigate past changes of the atmospheric circulation by comparing it to existing high-resolution proxy records from Italy. Furthermore, the new time series will be included into the European speleothem network. We will perform a coherency analysis of the high-resolution speleothem records from this network in order to test whether large-scale atmospheric circulation changes affecting central and northern European speleothem proxy time series during the Holocene also had an influence in the southern central Mediterranean.