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The climate in The Netherlands during the Younger Dryas and Preboreal: means and extremes obtained with an atmospheric general circulation model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2016

H. Renssen
H. Renssen*
Affiliation:
Netherlands Centre for Geo-ecological Research (ICG), Faculty of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, NL-1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands, renh@geo.vu.nl, phone +31 20 4447357, fax +31 20 6462457 Institut d’Astronomie et de Géophysique Georges Lemaître, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2 Chemin du Cyclotron, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, renssen@astr.ucl.ac.be, phone +32 10 478501

Abstract

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The shift from the coldYounger Dryas phase to the relatively warm Pre-boreal at~l 1.5 thousand years BP occurred within 50 calendar years and represents a clear example of rapid climate warming. Geologists and palaeo-ecologists have extensively studied the impact of this shift on the environment in The Netherlands. The global atmospheric general circulation model of the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology is applied to perform simulations of the Younger Dryas and Pre-boreal climates. Here detailed results are presented for the grid-cell representing The Netherlands, providing quantified estimates of climatic means and extremes for both periods. The results suggest that the Younger Dryas climate was characterised by cold winters (temperatures regularly below -20 °C) and cool summers (13-14 °C), with a high inter-annual variability, strong fluctuations in temperature, frequent storms and snowfall from September to May. The Pre-boreal climate was a ‘continental’ version of present-day climate, with cooler winters, warmer summers (~2 °C difference) and more snowfall, but lower wind speeds. Also, the Pre-boreal climate was wetter than the present and Younger Dryas climates. The main driving factors were the low temperatures of the partly sea-ice covered N Atlantic Ocean and the insolation that was very different from today, with more incoming solar radiation during summer (+30W/m2) and less during winter (-10W/m2).The presented detailed results could be valuable for interpreting palaeo-environmental records and for modelling studies on sedimentological processes during the Late Quaternary.

Keywords

climate changeGCMPre-borealThe Netherlandssimulation, Younger Dryas
Type
Research Article
Information
Netherlands Journal of Geosciences , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , June 2001 , pp. 19 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Stichting Netherlands Journal of Geosciences 2001

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