Past Climate Variability through Europe and Africa [Paperback]

This book focuses on two complementary time-scales, the Holocene (approximately the last 11,500 years) and the last glacial-interglacial cycle (approximately the last 130,000 years) to synthesize evidence of climate variability at the regional and continental scale across Europe and Africa. This is the first examination of historical climate variations at such a scale, and thus sets a benchmark for future research.

This book provides a major synthesis of evidence for past climate variability at the regional and continental scale across Europe and Africa. It focuses on two complementary time-scales, the Holocene (approximately the last 11,500 years) and the last glacial-interglacial cycle (approximately the last 130,000 years). An overview of the climate system of the past has never been attempted before on this scale, and, as such, the volume represents a benchmark for future research.

It is written by an expert group of climate change scientists and presents an insight into past climate variability that challenges climatologists who seek to explain climate dynamics of the past and provides climate modellers with a work of reference for data-model comparison. The book is an advanced but very readable text essential for all students and scientists interested in global environmental change.

1. Introduction; F. Gasse and R.W. Battarbee 2. Archives and Proxies along the PEP III Transect; F. Oldfield and R. Thompson 3. Oceanic Climate Variability at Millennial Time-Scales: Models of Climate Connections; L. Vidal and H. Arz 4. Between Agulhas and Benguela: responses of Southern African climates of the Late Pleistocene to current fluxes, orbital precession and the extent of the Circum-Antarctic vortex; T.C. Partridge, L. Scott and R.R. Schneider 5. Holocene climatic trends and rhythms in southern Africa; L. Scott and J.A. Lee-Thorp 6. Diatom productivity in Northern Lake Malawi during the past 25,000 years: implicationlÓ)