Pollen data from numerous sites around the Mediterranean Sea indicate that
several important vegetation and climatic changes occurred during the Plioc
ene. These data are in good agreement with pollen records from northwest Eu
rope and with delta(18)O curves from Mediterranean and Atlantic deep-sea co
res. Quantitative palaeoclimatic reconstructions from Pliocene pollen data
of the Mediterranean region cannot be based on conventional modem analogue
techniques, as individual Pliocene pollen spectra contain taxa representing
temperate, warm-temperate and subtropical plants that do not grow together
today. instead, we propose a new method that uses a climatic amplitude met
hod modified to take partially into account the relative abundances of the
taxa. We applied this method to the Pliocene Garraf 1 palynological sequenc
e from Catalonia, which provides a long continuous record of climatic chang
e from 5.3 Ma to the Early Pleistocene. We estimate that annual temperature
s were 1 to 5 degrees C higher than today and the annual precipitation 400
to 1000 mm higher than today prior to the beginning of the late Cenozoic gl
acial-interglacial cycles. in contrast, temperature and precipitation both
fell sharply during the glacial phases of the earliest glacial-interglacial
cycles. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.