Human influence and the changing geomorphology of Mediterranean deltas and coasts over the last 6000 years: From progradation to destruction phase?

http://www.ugr.es/~grupo179/pdf/Moreno%202012.pdf

The Medieval Climate Anomaly in the Iberian Peninsula reconstructed from marine and lake records

Within the last Millennium, the transition between the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA; ca. 1000–1300 CE) and the Little Ice Age (LIA; ca. 1400–1800 CE) has been recorded in a global array of climatic and oceanographic proxies. In this study, we review proxy evidence for two alternative hypotheses for the effects of this shift in the North Atlantic region. One hypothesis postulates that the MCA/LIA transition included a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and a transition to more negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) conditions, resulting in a strong cooling of the North Atlantic region. The alternative hypothesis proposes a MCA/LIA shift to an increased number of storms over the North Atlantic linked to increased mid-latitude cyclogenesis and hence a pervasive positive NAO state. The two sets of proxy records and thus of the two competing hypotheses are then reconciled based on available results from climate model simulations of the last Millennium. While an increase in storm frequency implicates positive NAO, increased intensity would be consistent with negative NAO during the LIA. Such an increase in cyclone intensity could have resulted from the steepening of the meridional temperature gradient as the poles cooled more strongly than the Tropics from the MCA into the LIA.

North Atlantic storminess and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation during the last Millennium: Reconciling contradictory proxy records of NAO variability

http://www.gm.univ-montp2.fr/IMG/pdf/Sabatier_2012_QR.pdf

7000 years of paleostorm activity in the NW Mediterranean Sea in response to Holocene climate events

The integration of climate information from instrumental data and documentary and natural archives; evidence of past human activity derived from historical, paleoecological, and archaeological records; and new climate modeling techniques promises major breakthroughs for our understanding of climate sensitivity, ecological processes, environmental response, and human impact. In this chapter, we review the availability and potential of instrumental data, less well-known written records, and terrestrial and marine natural proxy archives for climate in the Mediterranean region over the last 2000 years. We highlight the need to integrate these different proxy archives and the importance for multiproxy studies of disentangling complex relationships among climate, sea-level changes, fire, vegetation, and forests, as well as land use and other human impacts. Focusing on dating uncertainties, we address seasonality effects and other uncertainties in the different proxy records. We describe known and anticipated challenges posed by integrating multiple diverse proxies in high-resolution climate-variation reconstructions, including proxy limitations to robust reconstruction of the natural range of climate variability and problems specific to temporal scales from interannual to multicentennial. Finally, we highlight the potential of paleo models to contribute to climate reconstructions in the Mediterranean, by narrowing the range of climate-sensitivity estimates and by assimilating multiple proxies.

/pdf/a-review-of-2000-years-of-paleoclimatic-evidence-in-the-46drfl8sdg.pdf

A review of 2000 years of paleoclimatic evidence in the Mediterranean

/pdf/intense-storm-activity-during-the-little-ice-age-on-the-t145eyvnyz.pdf

Baptiste Joly

Papers

Intense storm activity during the Little Ice Age on the French Mediterranean coast.