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17 - Climate and Environment Reconstructions Based on Speleothems from the Levant

from Part II: - Palaeoclimates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2017

By
M. Bar-Matthews ,
A. Ayalon ,
A. Vaks  and
A. Frumkin
Edited by
Yehouda Enzel  and
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Yehouda Enzel
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

The current climate of the carbonate terrain of the southern Levant presents steep precipitation gradient over <300 km, from sub-humid Mediterranean (>800 mm yr-1) in the north, to extremely dry in the southern Negev (<50 mm yr-1). This makes the area ideal for speleothem-based paleoclimate studies. Speleothems chronologies (U-Th method), their growth periods and δ18O and δ13C compositions are tools in paleoclimate reconstructions. Analyzing large number of speleothems across Israel enabled reconstruction of timing of climate changes and regional responses to large scale global climate variations. It is demonstrated that it is possible to reconstruct the precipitation gradient during glacial and interglacial and the spatial migration of the desert boundary, and how this migration is potentially a driver of human migration "out of Africa". Multi-proxy approach including precise U-Th ages, δ18O, δ13C, strontium (87Sr/86Sr) δ18O and δD of fluid inclusions trapped within speleothems, 'clumped isotopes' (∆47), high resolution isotopic and imaging techniques, help resolving the origin of rainfall, changes in seasonality pattern, origin of dust, and paleotemperature reconstruction.
Type
Chapter
Information
Quaternary of the Levant
Environments, Climate Change, and Humans
 , pp. 151 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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