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Climate signal in varve thickness: Lake La Cruz (Spain), a case study

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Abstract

Lake La Cruz is a meromictic, karstic lake with annually laminated sediment formed by summer pulses of calcite deposition. The aim of this study was to explore the potential use of the laminated sediment from Lake La Cruz as a quantitative climate proxy, by calibrating lamina thickness against instrumental climate data. Statistical analysis of the relation between lamina thickness and the meteorological dataset indicated a high correlation between calcium carbonate lamina thickness and rainfall from December to March (r  = 0.725, P < 0.01, n = 35). Winter rainfall anomalies in the area are, in turn, highly negatively correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation index (NAO, r = −0.832; P < 0.01; n = 53). We propose a regression model to infer past winter rainfall from calcium carbonate laminae thickness. These results highlight new possibilities for paleoenvironmental research using calcite laminated sediment records as climate proxies, especially to study past rainfall variability.

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Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the INM (Spanish Institute of Meteorology) which kindly provided the meteorological data. We gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and M. Brenner for the English revision. This work has been financed by CICyT grant REN2002-03272 CLI and CGL2005-04040/BOS from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to M.R. Miracle and E. Vicente, respectively. L. Romero-Viana was supported by a scholarship from Generalitat Valenciana.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Ecology and Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, 46100, Burjassot, Valencia, Spain

    Lidia Romero-Viana, Antonio Camacho, Eduardo Vicente & Maria Rosa Miracle

  2. Institut Ciències de la Terra “Jaume Almera”, CSIC, C/Lluis Solé i Sabarís, s/n, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Ramon Julià

Authors
  1. Lidia Romero-Viana
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  2. Ramon Julià
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  3. Antonio Camacho
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  4. Eduardo Vicente
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  5. Maria Rosa Miracle
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Correspondence to Lidia Romero-Viana.

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Romero-Viana, L., Julià, R., Camacho, A. et al. Climate signal in varve thickness: Lake La Cruz (Spain), a case study. J Paleolimnol 40, 703–714 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-008-9194-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-008-9194-6

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