Late Wisconsin climate in northeastern USA and southeastern Canada, reconstructed from fossil beetle assemblages

✍ Scribed by SCOTT A. ELIAS; KATHERINE H. ANDERSON; JOHN T. ANDREWS

• Book ID: 102659376
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 625 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0267-8179
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1417(199609/10)11:5<417::aid-jqs273>3.0.co;2-k

✦ Synopsis

Mean July and January temperatures are reconstructed from radiocarbon-dated fossil beetle assemblages, yielding a synthesis of palaeoclimatic history of the regions south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in North America from 35 000 to 8500 yr BP. Mean July temperatures close to the last glacial maximum were 1 1-1 2°C colder than present; mean January temperatures were possibly 10-19°C colder. Mutual climatic range analyses of the beetle assemblages show warming of mean summer temperatures as early as 13.7 kyr, although ice-proximal sites were consistently about 5°C cooler than ice-distal sites. Late-glacial mean summer temperatures J ~~~J of Quaternary science peaked between 12 and 1 1 kyr, then remained fairly constant through the early Holocene. Mean winter temperatures did not reach modern values until after 10 kyr.