A high-resolution Holocene speleothem record from NE Romania: the nexus of Arctic and North Atlantic atmospheric circulation systems

Abstract

The Romanian Carpathians act as a geomorphological barrier between different atmospheric circulation systems over Central and Eastern Europe; the NW of Romania lies under the remote influence of the North Atlantic oscillation, while the NE is influenced by the Arctic climate. In NW Romania, previous stable isotope studies of speleothems have not yielded a clear account of abrupt climate oscillations during the Holocene. Here we present results from a stalagmite collected from the Tauşoare Cave, located in NE Carpathians. The chronology of stalagmite T141 is based on 15 high-precision Th/U dates ranging between 32 and 1.1 ka with a continuous growth between ~13.3 and 1.1 ka. The portion of the record within the Holocene was analyzed for δ18O and δ13C at a resolution ranging between 15 to 200 years/sample. The resulting δ18O record captures the Younger Dryas (YD) event centered at ~12.9 ka, with δ18O values about 4 ‰ more depleted than those corresponding to the Holocene Climatic Optimum. The 8.2 ka event appears to be also captured in the record, although less prominent. The T141 isotope record is significantly different when compared to coeval records measured in speleothems from NW Carpathians, which do not exhibit marked changes during the YD or 8.2 ka events. This is likely due to the contrasting effect of temperature and atmospheric transport on δ18O signal in NW Romania. Within a distance of 200 km to the east, on the eastern flank of the Carpathian range, the δ18O signal of the Arctic circulation appears to be more prominent and clearly exhibits a positive relationship with temperature changes.