Revisiting the longest European paleoenvironmental archive

跨越多个冰期-间冰期旋回的长期海洋、冰芯和陆地档案为研究第四纪气候的演变提供了独特的视角。首先，它们揭示了气候变率和相关生物反应的更完整的范围，其次，它们使我们能够观察到这种变率特征的长期趋势。在这些档案中，希腊东北部的Tenaghi Philippon一直占据着突出的地位，尽管花粉分析早在20世纪60年代就开始了。这是一个函数(i)它的时间长度，包含了过去135万年的植被变化记录；（ii）其完整性，与全球深海记录的密切对应证明了这一点。然而，记录的下部采样分辨率较低，而且原始岩心不再被整理。由Prof. J. Pross （Frankfurt）领导的团队最近获得了60米以上的高质量新岩心，而2007年秋季将组织进一步的岩心运动，达到150米的深度。这项申请寻求获得资金，将2007年的取心从1.5亿延长到2亿（从大约90万年前延长到135万年前[Ma]），到达含花粉沉积物的底部。新岩心将在德国进行管理，在那里将首先进行全岩心测井和古地磁分析。这将成为未来与德国和荷兰同事合作的几项研究资助提案的基础。在当前应用的背景下，我建议对0.95 Ma左右的早更新世冰期-间冰期旋回进行高分辨率的花粉分析，该周期以4.1千年（kyr）的气候周期为特征。更具体地说，通过检查41 kyr冰期-间冰期周期内的植被响应，有可能测试冰量是否发生了“隐”岁差（23 kyr）变化，正如Raymo等人（2006）最近提出的那样，他们指出，由于半球之间岁差不同步，每个半球冰量的变化将在全球综合海平面重建中被抵消。虽然Raymo等人的假设很难用古海洋学或海平面代用物来检验，但当地植被的变化可能保留了半球冰扩张的记忆。因此，如果北方冰盖在41-kyr周期中确实因岁差而扩张，原则上，这应该反映在欧洲树木种群的收缩上。

Long marine, ice core and terrestrial archives spanning multiple glacial-interglacial cycles provide a unique perspective into the evolution of Quaternary climates. Firstly, they reveal a more complete view of the range of climate variability and associated biotic responses, and secondly, they allow us to observe long-term trends in the character of this variability. Among these archives, Tenaghi Philippon, NE Greece, has continued to occupy a prominent position despite the fact that pollen analyses were initiated as early as the 1960s. This is a function of (i) its temporal length, containing a record of vegetation changes of the last 1.35 million; and (ii) its completeness, as demonstrated by its close correspondence with global deep-sea records. However, the lower part of the record had low sampling resolution and, moreover, the original core is no longer curated. A new high-quality core of the upper 60m was recently obtained by a team led by Prof. J. Pross (Frankfurt), while a further coring campaign to reach a depth of 150m is currently being organized for Autumn 2007. This application seeks to obtain funding to extend the coring in 2007 from 150m to 200m (from about 0.9 to 1.35 million years ago [Ma]), reaching the base of the polleniferous deposits. The new core will be curated in Germany, where whole-core logging and palaeomagnetic analyses will initially be undertaken. This will form the basis of several future research grant proposals in association with German and Dutch colleagues. In the context of the current application, I propose to undertake a high-resolution pollen analysis of an early Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycle around 0.95 Ma, an interval characterized by 41 thousand year (kyr) climate periodicity. More specifically, by examining the vegetation response within a 41-kyr glacial-interglacial cycle, it may be possible to test whether 'cryptic' precessional (23-kyr) variations in ice volume occurred, as recently suggested by Raymo et al. (2006) who pointed out that because precession is out of phase between hemispheres, changes in ice volume in each hemisphere would cancel out in globally integrated reconstructions of sea level. While the Raymo et al. hypothesis is difficult to test using palaeoceanographic or sea level proxies, changes in local vegetation may retain a memory of hemispheric ice expansion. Thus, if northern ice sheets did expand in the middle of the 41-kyr cycle in response to precession, that should, in principle, be reflected in a contraction of S. European tree populations.