Here, we present a near-annual-resolution climate proxy record of central European temperature reconstructed from the Eifel maar lakes of Holzmaar and Auel in Germany spanning the past 60,000 years. The lake sediments reveal a series of previously undocumented multidecadal climate cycles of around 20- to 150-years that persisted through the last glacial cycle. The periodicity of these cycles suggests that they are related to the Atlantic multidecadal climate oscillations found in the instrumental record and in other climate archives during the Holocene. Our record shows that multidecadal variability in central Europe was strong during all warm interstadials, but was substantially muted during all cold stadial periods. We suggest that this decrease in multidecadal variability was the result of the atmospheric circulation changes associated with the weakening of the AMOC and the expansion of North Atlantic sea ice cover during the coldest parts of the last ice age.
Organic carbon was determined by measuring the reflectance for each wavelength of the visible light as percent relative to a white color standard. Absorption forms a pronounced minimum in the wavelength range of 640 nm – 730 nm in cores both from Holzmaar and Auel. Reflectivity in this wavelength band (I-Band, 660 – 670 nm, i.e. the red part of the spectrum), was shown to relate to sediment concentrations of chlorophyll a and its degradation products.The absorption at 670 nm was calibrated in the first study versus organic carbon and chlorine content, both of which revealed a significant relation to the “In situ Reflectance Spectroscopy – ISRS” absorption at 670 nm, which is subtracted from the interpolated value between 640 and 730 nm. The ISRS670 detects accordingly chlorophyll a, b, and c and also Bacteriochlorophyll c and d (Green sulfur bacteria) as well as their derivates and can be applied to detect trends in total aquatic paleoproduction in both ocean and lake sediments.
Heat and carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and ocean is a major control on Earths climate and increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and concomitant global warming stimulate uptake of both heat and CO2 by the ocean. The Southern Ocean south of 30 S, occupying just over 1/4 of the surface ocean area, accounts for a disproportionate share of the vertical exchange of properties between the deep and surface waters of the ocean and between the surface ocean and the atmosphere. On average, the Southern Ocean absorbs 70Prozent of anthropogenic heat and 42Prozent of anthropogenic carbon in a new set of climate model simulations. This region thus plays a central role in determining the rate of climate change. However, the exact processes governing the magnitude and regional distribution of heat and carbon uptake remain poorly understood with models showing the largest disagreement in Southern Ocean anthropogenic air-sea heat and CO2 fluxes due to their widely divergent representation of physical circulation and atmosphere-ocean interactions. Indeed, the fraction of the simulated uptake within the Southern Ocean ranges between 30 to 160Prozent for excess heat and between 38 to 47Prozent for anthropogenic carbon. Natural unforced variability in models and observations further complicates the detection and attribution of changes. We will investigate anthropogenic ocean heat and carbon uptake with our main objectives being: (i) intercomparing ocean heat and carbon uptake in Earth System Model (ESM) simulations conducted for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), (ii) assessing the contribution of internal variability to model-model and model-data differences in anthropogenic heat and carbon uptake, and (iii) quantifying the contribution of differences in basic atmospheric forcing, model parameterizations, sea ice representation and model resolution to differences in heat and carbon uptake and distribution, and disagreements between models. This will be achieved through a series of process-perturbation experiments and ensemble simulations with an Earth System Model configured for transient climate change that help in attributing variations over the Southern Ocean. We will also contribute to the broader community goal in interpreting projections of IPCC AR5 coupled climate models. Ultimately, the project leads to a better understanding of Southern Ocean biogeochemical processes, thereby pinning down one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in predictions of the fate of anthropogenic carbon and of the climate.