Climatic variability during the last two millennia in the Tyrrhenian Sea: evidences from planktonic foraminifera and geochemical data.

Recent studies demonstrated that the Mediterranean continental shelf and, especially, the delta areas provide one of the most complete archive for monitoring the palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic changes occurring in the last millennia. This work based on marine paleo proxies is aimed at documenting high-resolution timeseries (decadal to century scale) for the Mediterranean Sea. It is included in the Italian Strategic Project NEXTDATA "A national system for recovery, storage, accessibility and dissemination of environmental and climatic data from mountain and marine areas" (http://www.nextdataproject.it). In this frame we studied several marine sites from central and south Tyrrhenian Sea, Sicily Channel, Taranto Gulf and Adriatic Sea considered key-areas for Mediterranean climatic reconstruction of the last two millennia. Here we focus on two continental shelf marine sites (Gulf of Gaeta and Gulf of Salerno) recovered at 93 and 103 meters water depth, respectively. High-resolution integrated studies allow us to reconstruct the climatic variability during the last 2000 years.