The 4.2 ka BP Event in the Mediterranean region: an overview

Monica Bini (1) , Giovanni Zanchetta (1) , Aurel Perşoiu , Rosine Cartier (2) , Albert Catalá (3) , Isabel Cacho (3) , Jonathan Dean (4) , Federico Di Rita (5) , Russell Drysdale (6) , Martin Finnè (7, 8) , Ilaria Isola (9) , Bassem Jalali (10) , Fabrizio Lirer (11) , Donatella Magri (5) , Alessia Masi (5) , Leszek Marks , Anna Maria Mercuri (12) , Odile Peyron (13) , Laura Sadori (5) , Marie-Alexandrine Sicre (14) , Fabian Welc (15) , Christoph Zielhofer (16) , Elodie Brisset (2)

1 Dipartimiento di Scienze della Terra
2 IMBE - Institut méditerranéen de biodiversité et d'écologie marine et continentale
3 Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra i de l’Oceà [Barcelona]
4 University of Hull [United Kingdom]
5 Dipartimento di biologia ambientale
6 University of Melbourne
7 Uppsala Universitet [Uppsala]
8 Stockholm University
9 INGV - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia – Sezione di Pisa
10 LOCEAN - Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques
11 Istituto Ambiente Marino Costiero
12 Laboratorio di Palinologia e Paleobotanica
13 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
14 VOG - Variabilité de l'Océan et de la Glace de mer
15 UKSW - Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University
16 Leipzig University / Universität Leipzig

The Mediterranean region and the Levant have returned some of the clearest evidence of a climatically dry period occurring around 4200 years ago. However, some regional evidence is controversial and contradictory, and issues remain regarding timing, progression, and regional ar-ticulation of this event. In this paper, we review the evidence from selected proxies (sea-surface temperature, precipitation , and temperature reconstructed from pollen, δ 18 O on speleothems, and δ 18 O on lacustrine carbonate) over the Mediterranean Basin to infer possible regional climate patterns during the interval between 4.3 and 3.8 ka. The values and limitations of these proxies are discussed, and their potential for furnishing information on seasonality is also explored. Despite the chronological uncertainties, which are the main limitations for disentangling details of the climatic conditions , the data suggest that winter over the Mediterranean involved drier conditions, in addition to already dry summers. However, some exceptions to this prevail-where wetter conditions seem to have persisted-suggesting regional heterogeneity in climate patterns. Temperature data, even if sparse, also suggest a cooling anomaly, even if this is not uniform. The most common paradigm to interpret the precipitation regime in the Mediterranean-a North Atlantic Oscillation-like pattern-is not completely satisfactory to interpret the selected data.

Domaines: Climatologie

Monica Bini, Giovanni Zanchetta, Aurel Perşoiu, Rosine Cartier, Albert Catalá, et al.. The 4.2 ka BP Event in the Mediterranean region: an overview. Climate of the Past, 2019, 15 (2), pp.555-577. ⟨10.5194/cp-15-555-2019⟩. ⟨insu-02104912⟩