The Last Transition From Extreme Glacial to Extreme Interglacial Climate in NW Patagonia: Regional and Global Implications

The study of interhemispheric climate linkages during and since the last ice age has benefited from the recent development of high-resolution ice core and marine records from the mid- and high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Few paleoclimate records from terrestrial environments in these regions, however, have the temporal continuity, time resolution, and adequate chronologic control to allow a detailed examination of the timing, rates, direction, and phasing of climate change at millennial timescales. Stratigraphic, palynologic, and charcoal records from small, high-sediment accumulating lakes in the Chilean Lake District (41ºS) afford useful data for examining the interval between the LGM to the early Holocene (25-8 ka, ka=cal kyr BP). Millennial-scale changes in glacier extent and vegetation patterns within this interval match key events both in the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctic records, in particular the EPICA Dome C data, highlighting the role of an atmosphere-based conduit for the global propagation of abrupt climate changes. The onset of the last termination in NW Patagonia is marked by glacial collapse and the expansion of rainforest trees at 17.7 ka. An apparent antiphase relationship among the polar hemispheres between 17.7-14.7 ka, might reflect the hemispheric-scale effects of a quasi-total shut down of Atlantic Meridional Overturning circulation driven by Heinrich event 1. Extreme glacial and interglacial modes in the position/strength of the westerlies at multi-millennial timescales in the southern westerlies accompany important shifts in the abundance and composition of rainforest communities during the last termination and the early Holocene. At millennial timescales, this interval is characterised by successive warming pulses interrupted by a generalized reversal in trend with cooling events starting at 14.7 and 13.4 ka. Fires between 12.9-11.5 ka, i.e. Younger Dryas Chron (YDC), led to the expansion of opportunistic rainforest species and decline in all other trees, vines, and epiphytes. No species indicative of warming increase during this interval, suggesting that rainfall variability at sub-millennial timescales might have set the stage for fire occurrence in a cool-temperate environment dominated by North Patagonian species and cold-resistant conifers. Nowadays, El Nino events are teleconnected with negative anomalies in summer precipitation in the Chilean Lake District. Thus, it is possible that an ENSO-like signal during the YDC may have triggered forest fires in NW Patagonia. Acknowledgements: Fcyt 1030766, ICM P02-051-F