Classical glacial refugia such as the southern European peninsulas were important for species survival during glacial periods and acted as sources of post-glacial colonisation processes. Only recently, some studies have provided evidence for glacial refugia north of the southern European peninsulas. In the present study, we combined species distribution models (SDMs) with phylogeographic analys...

The Great Khingan Mountain range, Northeast China, is located on the northern limit of modern East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) and thus highly sensitive to the extension of the EASM from glacial to interglacial modes. Here, we present a high-resolution pollen record covering the last glacial maximum and the early Holocene from a closed crater Lake Moon to reconstruct vegetation history during t...

Waxing/waning of the ice sheets and the associated change in thermohaline circulation have played an important role in global climate change since major continental ice sheets appeared in the northern hemisphere about 2.75 million years ago. In the earliest glacial stages, however, establishment of the linkage between ice sheet development and ocean circulation remains largely unclear. Here, we...

We used 5704 14C, 10Be, and 3He ages that span the interval from 10,000 to 50,000 years ago (10 to 50 ka) to constrain the timing of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in terms of global ice-sheet and mountain-glacier extent. Growth of the ice sheets to their maximum positions occurred between 33.0 and 26.5 ka in response to climate forcing from decreases in northern summer insolation, tropical Pac...

A major puzzle of paleoclimatology is why, after a long interval of cooling climate, each late Quaternary ice age ended with a relatively short warming leg called a termination. We here offer a comprehensive hypothesis of how Earth emerged from the last global ice age. A prerequisite was the growth of very large Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, whose subsequent collapse created stadial condition...

Safe marine navigation in the Arctic is becoming more important with a growing interest in the region in recent years [1]. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates there to be more than 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the arctic [2]. With the summer Arctic sea ice extent having decreased by 50% since 1980 [3], this now opening waterway has given rise to serious interest in...

It has been known for over a century that the Uinta Mountains contained numerous alpine glaciers during parts of the Quaternary Period, yet until recently, the glacial record on the south side of the range had received little scientifi c attention. Results of recent 1:24,000-scale fi eld mapping of surfi cial deposits in the southern Uinta Mountains indicate that glaciers in the southwestern an...

Buried sedimentary aggradational sections deposited between 800 ka and 600 ka in the Tiber River coastal alluvial plain have been studied using borecores from around Rome. Ar/Ar ages on sanidine and/or leucite from intercalated tephra layers and paleomagnetic investigation of clay sections provide geochronologic constraints on the timing of aggradation of two alluvial sections, demonstrating th...