Holocene seasonal sea surface temperature variations in the South Adriatic Sea inferred from a multi-proxy approach

Holocene cooling events were reconstructed for the South Adriatic Sea (Central Mediterranean) by means of analyses of organic walled dinoflagellate cysts, planktonic foraminifera, oxygen isotopes, calcareous nannoplankton, alkenones and pollen from a sediment core. Two coolings events were detected, during which sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were ~ 2°C lower. Unraveling the SST signal into dominant seasonal components shows maximum winter cooling of 2°C at around 6.0 ka BP, whereas at ~3.0 ka BP spring temperatures show a cooling of 2-3°C. The events, lasting several hundred years, are apparently synchronous with those in the Aegean Sea,where they have been related to known cooling events from the Greenland ice core record. A distinct interruption in Adriatic Sea sapropel S1 is not accompanied by a local drop in winter temperatures, but seems to be forced by ventilation, which probably occurred earlier in the Aegean Sea and subsequently was transmitted to the Adriatic Sea.