Tenaghi Philippon (Greece) Revisited: Drilling a Continuous Lower-Latitude Terrestrial Climate Archive of the Last 250,000 Years

Abstract

With the dramatically increasing manifestation of anthropogenic forcing on the Earth's climate, understanding the mechanisms and effects of abrupt climate change is crucial to extend the lead time for mitigation and adaptation. In this context, the climate variability during the Quaternary represents the closest analogy to present-day climate change. Unprecedented insights into both short-term (i.e., decadalto centennial-scale) and long-term (i.e., orbital-scale) climate variability over the last 740 kyr have been derived from ice cores from polar regions (Dansgaard et al., 1993; EPICA community members, 2004). These records show that the higher latitudes repeatedly witnessed temperature changes of more than 10°C within human time scales (Severinghaus et al., 1998). Considerably less information is available on the characteristics of abrupt climate change in the middle and lower latitudes and on their imprint on terrestrial environments. These regions are, however, home to the majority of the Earth’s population, and consequently they will witnessthe greatest impact of future climate change on people's lives.