The Holocene temperature conundrum.

Stable isotope evidence of late MIS 3 to middle Holocene palaeoenvironments from Sehonghong Rockshelter, eastern Lesotho

Evidence for human occupation of southern Africa’s high-altitude Maloti–Drakensberg Mountains is surprisingly common in the last glacial, yet the attraction of this relatively severe, cold region for hunter-foragers remains unclear. Sehonghong Rockshelter (1870m asl), in the eastern Lesotho Highlands, provides evidence for human occupation spanning Marine Isotope Stage 3 through the late Holoce...

Multiproxy evidence of Holocene climate variability from estuarine sediments, eastern North America

[1] We reconstructed paleoclimate patterns from oxygen and carbon isotope records from the fossil estuarine benthic foraminifera Elphidium and Mg/Ca ratios from the ostracode Loxoconcha from sediment cores from Chesapeake Bay to examine the Holocene evolution of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)-type climate variability. Precipitation-driven river discharge and regional temperature variability a...

THE CONUNDRUM OF EUTHANASIA

Plant macrofossil evidence for an early onset of the Holocene summer thermal maximum in northernmost Europe

Holocene summer temperature reconstructions from northern Europe based on sedimentary pollen records suggest an onset of peak summer warmth around 9,000 years ago. However, pollen-based temperature reconstructions are largely driven by changes in the proportions of tree taxa, and thus the early-Holocene warming signal may be delayed due to the geographical disequilibrium between climate and tre...

A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years.

Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<...