Regional climate change from peat stratigraphy for the mid- to late Holocene in central Ireland

Abstract

At the millennial scale bog surface wetness (BSW) records show a clear Holocene climate event stratigraphy,
with major phases comparable with other regional climate proxies such as chironomid inferred
temperature records. Moving towards the centennial scale, however, and towards the limits of chronological
certainty within the records, regional differences are apparent which likely reflect the more
heterogeneous precipitation patterns which occur on shorter timescales. The BSW data presented in this
paper are reconstructed from testate amoebae assemblages from central Ireland and are compared with
other regional records. The results suggest that this region is in phase with the North of Ireland in terms
of timings and durations of climate change, but the comparisons are less clear with a stacked and tuned
record from Northern Britain that shows an apparent offset compared to the Irish records. This may
reflect variations in past regional precipitation or be a function of the tuning and stacking process. The
broad phases of comparison between the Irish records, and the extension of the central Irish record back
to 6000 cal BP, allow comparisons with low frequency temperature reconstructions from chironomids,
which also show a broad level of correlation, with cooler temperatures relating to wetter BSW at
centennial to millennial timescales.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for P.G. Langdon: orcid.org/0000-0003-2724-2643

ORCID for A.G. Brown: orcid.org/0000-0002-1990-4654

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics