CGRG Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology
Search Results
Author : Cwynar, L.C.; Kurek, J.; Abbott, M.B.; Ager, T.A.; Barley, E.M.; Edwards, M.E.; Finney, B.P.; Irvine, F.; Pedersen, C.; Pienitz, R.; Racca, J.M.J.; Stepanovic, L.; and Walker, I.R.
Date : 2009.
Title : Late-Quaternary paleoclimate of Eastern Beringia.
Publication : CANQUA–CGRG Biennial Meeting. May 3-8, 2009. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby Campus, Burnaby, British Columbia.
Issue : Programme and Abstracts Volume
Page(s) : 63.
Abstract
The past climate of unglaciated Alaska-Yukon (eastern Beringia) is of great interest to archeologists, paleontologists and paleoecologists, yet few quantitative records of past climate are available from the region, the recent work of Viau et al. (2008) being an exception. We inferred past mean July summer temperatures for 7 sites in eastern Beringia by applying a midge inference model developed for western North America (Barley et al., 2006) to fossil midge head capsules extracted from lake sediments. The sites range spatially from coastal western Alaska to the northern Yukon and temporally from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present. There is considerable variation in the pattern of warming between sites, but one general feature is rising temperatures between ~14 and 15 cal ka with temperatures being close to modern or greater than modern. Most sites lack evidence for a Younger Dryas cooling. Some sites show lateglacial warming trends similar to the oxygen isotope records from the Greenland ice cores, but others do not. Evidence from one of the LGM sites suggests that full-glacial July temperatures in lowlands may not have been very different from modern temperatures. The broad warming trend is consistent with solar forcing.
Bibliography of Canadian Geomorphology