HOLIVAR2006 Abstracts
ACCROTELM: Abrupt Climate Changes Recorded Over The European Land Mass.
F.M. Chambers1, J.R.G. Daniell1, J.B.Hunt1 and ACCROTELM Members2
1Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research, Department of Natural and Social Sciences, University of Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall, Swindon Rd, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, UK
2A list of ACCROTELM members can be found at http://www.glos.ac.uk/accrotelm/
Contact: F.M. Chambers (fchambers@glos.ac.uk)
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European policymakers require reliable climate-modelling scenarios to determine effective strategies for economic development. However, climate models can only provide plausible scenarios for Europe if they are tested and validated against past climates. The frequency, magnitude, and rate of past climate changes are incompletely known, but diverse sources imply there were abrupt climate changes in the Mid-Late Holocene that had significant effects on human societies in Europe and elsewhere. The project ACCROTELM will investigate some of these changes using the hitherto under-used primary proxy-climate data sources contained in mires.
Recent research has shown that mires provide excellent data on past abrupt climate changes. These data can be integrated with complementary climate data from lakes to demonstrate the magnitude and rate of Holocene climatic variability. Mires have diverse proxy-climate indicators, with direct coupling to the atmosphere; robust, replicable records with decadal resolution; and circum-North Atlantic distribution. European mires and lakes yield integrated records of hydrological/temperature changes, directly referable to climate.
ACCROTELM Members (2006) will generate continuous records of climate changes from mire sites along transects across Europe. These records will be compared with complementary summary data on lake-level changes, with a focus on episodes of abrupt climate change. Several other posters in the HOLIVAR meeting exemplify some of the ACCROTELM research results.
ACCROTELM is a project in the European Commission's Fifth Framework Energy and Environment programme, contract number EVK2-CT-2002-00166.
A list of ACCROTELM members can be found at http://www.glos.ac.uk/accrotelm/
Frank is Professor in Physical Geography and Scientific Co-ordinator of ACCROTELM. His principal research interests are in (i) the evaluation of ‘proxy’-climate records, so as to assess the magnitude, rate and direction of climatic change; (ii) Late-Quaternary vegetational history, including assessment of human impact on the landscape; (iii) the application of palaeoecological techniques to evaluate recent environmental change in mires and moorlands, to assist in habitat- and landscape conservation; (iv) dating techniques in Late Quaternary palaeoecology.