气候变化领域集成服务门户

Vegetation across northwest Europe responded instantly and synchronously to abrupt cooling during the last deglaciation, according to a compilation of precisely dated terrestrial records. The North Atlantic region experienced abrupt high-amplitude cooling at the onset of the Younger Dryas stadial. However, due to chronological uncertainties in the available terrestrial records it is unclear whether terrestrial ecosystem response to this event was instantaneous and spatially synchronous, or whether regional or time-transgressive lags existed. Here we use new palynological results from a robustly dated lake sediment sequence retrieved from lake Hamelsee (north Germany) to show that vegetation change started at 12,820 cal. yr BP, concurrent with the onset of changes in local climate. A comparison of the Hamelsee results to a compilation of precisely dated palynological records shows instant and, within decadal-scale dating uncertainty, synchronous response of the terrestrial plant community to Late-Glacial climate change across northwest Europe. The results indicate that the environmental impact of climate cooling was more severe than previously thought and illustrates the sensitivity of natural terrestrial ecosystems to external forcing.