Late Holocene hydro-climatic variability in the eastern Mediterranean : a spatial multiproxy approach

• Main Author: Μπασούκας, Δημήτριος Αδριανός
• Other Authors: Bassukas, Dimitrios Adrianos
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Late Holocene; Paleoclimate; Eastern Mediterranean; Proxy data; Ανώτερο Ολόκαινο; Ανατολική Μεσόγειος; Παλαιοκλίμα

In the current master thesis (13) paleoclimatic archives of the broader eastern Mediterranean area were collected and examined statistically in search of underlying millennial trends for the period 200-2800BP (before 1950). For each archive, a proxy record representative of hydroclimatic changes was selected, normalized using z-factors, to facilitate intercomparison, and analyzed statistically. The multivariate statistical analysis was performed using a clustering analysis (HCA) and dimension reduction (PCA), which led to groupings of similar records in a temporal manner and allowed the identification of spatially underlying millennial scale modes of variability. Two main modes of variability were identified, further supporting complex trajectories of paleoclimatic evolution in the region. A first mode was identified for sites presenting a millennial scale trend from a wetter to an overall drier phase, with respective changes at major phase shifts at 1400BP and 1100BP. All sites were from the southern Balkan region and north as well as southwestern Turkey. A contrasting dry to wet millennial scale trend was identified for a site in the Peloponnese (Greece) and the Levant area, with major phase shift around 750BP. The inclusion of different proxies from very different environmental settings and the 200-year window has complicated the connection of established short-term climatic events to the study findings.