WAS THE CLIMATE OF THE EEMIAN STABLE - A QUANTITATIVE CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION FROM 7 EUROPEAN POLLEN RECORDS

The aim of the present study is to estimate the range of the climatic variability during the Eemian interglacial, which lasted about 10,000 years (marine isotopic stage 5e). The modem pollen analogue technique is applied to seven high resolution pollen records from France and pol and to infer the annual precipitation and the mean temperature of the coldest month. The succession of pollen taxa and the reconstructed cli mate can be interpreted coherently. The warmest winter temperatures ar e centred in the first three millennia of the Eemian interglacial, dur ing the mixed oak forest phase with Quercus and Corylus as dominant tr ees. A rapid shift to cooler winter temperatures of about 6 degrees to 10 degrees C occurred between 4000 and 5000 years after the beginning of the Eemian, related to the spread of the Carpinus forest. This shi ft is more obvious for the reconstructed temperatures than for precipi tation and is unique and irreversible for the whole Eemian period. Fol lowing this climatic shift of the Eemian, variations of temperature an d precipitation during the fast 5000 years were only slight with an am plitude of about 2 degrees to 4 degrees C and 200 to 400 mm/yr. The es timated temperature changes were certainly not as strong as those reco nstructed for the stage 6/5e termination or the transition 5e/5d. This is consistent with the constantly high ratio of tree pollen throughou t the Eemian, indicative of a succession of temperate forest types. Th is gradual transition between different forest landscapes can be relat ed to intrinsic competition between the species rather than to a drast ic climatic change. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved .